


it's about growing up, getting older, living on a lover's shoulder (it's about time)

by babyturtle



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Friendly Bickering, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Sana Bakkoush & Isak Valtersen Friendship, abuse of popular children's books, biology buddies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2018-10-31 11:11:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10898139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babyturtle/pseuds/babyturtle
Summary: The Sana-and-Isak-Childhood-Friends ft. Bookclubs AU you didn't know you were looking for.Sana and Isak might've spent more time fighting than reading the first day the met, but sometimes that's just how it goes. Usually. Usually that's how it goes. With Sana and Isak specifically. In their mostly dysfunctional two person book club.Or, life is hard and growing up harder, but take my hand and I'm right there with you.





	1. Part 1: Book Clubs and Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> [Come say hi on tumblr!](http://turtles-whynot.tumblr.com/)

** Age 8 **

With young children, as with adults, there is a tendency to divide up into people that are like you and people that are not.  And in the general hierarchy of a Norwegian elementary school, the girl with the hijab was the ultimate Person Not Like Us. Or, at least, that’s the way Sana felt. Everyone was always staring, or not sitting next to her or not wanting to partner up with her for projects. Whatever, it wasn’t like she wanted to partner with them either. 

Her brother didn’t seem to have the same problems, which only mad Sana mad when she was really _really_ lonely. 

But Sana didn't need friends. She had her group at the mosque on weekends and Elias was really nice to her and let her hang out with his friends sometimes, when he wasn't too busy being a jerk. And anyway, everyone at the school sucked. That's what her dad said. Her mom said that she shouldn't want to be fiends with anyone that didn't want to be friend with her. 

 

…

 

Sana and Isak did not take to each other the first time they met. It was in a library after school and there was only one copy of the third grade biology book.

“Can you just give me the book?” Isak glared. 

“I was here first,” Sana argued, shoulders tense. “You can’t make me.” She didn’t know if that was true. She thought the teacher would probably tell her to let it go or to share the book but sometimes adults would go out of their way to help her so. She didn't know. But she did know that, usually, if she said things as if she was sure, people believed her.

Isak backed off. _Good_ , Sana thought, aggressively crushing any sense of regret or thoughts about how it might be nice to share the book. She didn’t need anybody. 

People, in Sana’s limited experience, spent a lot of time talking at her and not a lot of time talking to her. Usually, though, in the library, no one was really around to talk at or to her. No one really bothered her or looked at her. She could relax a little bit. She didn't have to be Sana Bakkoush. It was nice. She could admit that much. 

As she got older, the library would become less of a solo refuge and more of a hugely popular study spot but in third grade, the children did not flock to the bookshelves and there was rarely if ever a need to study. 

So, instead of studying, she would spend thirty minutes after school reading the chapter for the next class. She was worried that the librarian might come and try to ask her to leave if she didn’t read something. Also, she didn't want to look stupid in front of Ms Tyrigson.

She didn’t know why, but the teacher always seemed to call on her in science classes and always seemed to wait, for some sort of strange air, for her to say something stupid. Sana told her mom that, and her mom hadn’t called her silly or anything. Instead, her mom had rubbed her hair and kissed her head and told her sometimes they were like that and if wasn’t fair but Sana was just going to have to work extra hard to make sure that she didn’t. People, her mom said, will always expect the worst from you. So you’ve got to be better. I’m sorry. In this country, they don’t understand us. 

Sana, in the way that all kids do at some point, some for seconds, some for minutes, some for years and some for lifetimes, thought her family was the best family and that her family was better than all other families. Her family, she felt for some time but not too long, was somehow better than the kids in the classes around her that didn’t understand her and didn’t want to.

The other kids thought the same as her, but they thought it for longer and they said it to her often. Sana would never admit it, but sometimes, especially when she was younger, she would wonder if they were right. 

But her father always said they were wrong and she was better and she must never let them know they got to her. He told her, make sure you work hard. Make sure you have something to hold over them. Make them respect you. 

Her father didn’t say much else and so everyday after school Sana would go to the mostly empty school library on Mondays and try to — get ahead. Both her parents worked, so she always had to wait for Elias to finish up at 3:20 and come get her anyway. 

But this year, there was a boy who came to the library too and wanted to read the same books. 

Yesterday, Sana got to the book first. Today, Isak did. She was running late because one of her teachers wanted to tell her stuff about doing such a good job in biology and how nice it was and Sana, who usually loved those sorts of meetings, could only think about how now _Isak_ would get the biology book, stupid cow. 

And if Isak has the biology book, you won’t be able to keep being ‘impressed’ and ‘excited’ by now potential, she thought while her teacher yammered on and on and on and — finally stopped. 

Sana took off full blast for the library, something that was not an easy feet in all her layers and which left her splotchy, hot and panting at the door. Looking inside. Where Isak was sitting at the tables. Reading _her_ biology book.

She struggled briefly to wrench the door open then marched over to his table. 

“You have to share,” she told him. 

“You didn’t share yesterday.”

It was a good point. “Yeah, well. I was just talking to the teacher today, so it’s not fair that you got here first.”

He looked up, startled. Sana smirked. Bingo. “That’s why I was late, you know. Talking to Ms Hoffman. About biology. So you have to share because Ms Hoffman said so.”

Isak narrowed his eyes but slid the book over a little and let her read over his shoulder. 

It was awkward. Sana read too quickly and Isak liked to underline the words with his fingers as he read. 

“Can you turn to the next page already?” Sana asked him. 

He scowled at her, which, on a small eight year old wasn’t wildly effective and said, “no.”

Sana pulled a face. 

He looked shocked, which annoyed Sana because everyone was always shocked to find out that she was actually just like them and Sana _hated_ it. She reached forward and grabbed the next page, pulling it open. Isak reached for the page as soon as he realized what she was trying to do to push it back. 

There was a loud _riiiiiiiiiiiiip_ and both of them froze, dropping the page. 

“It’s your fault,” Isak whispered, red. “If you had just let me finish reading -“

“You should have let me turn the page,” Sana argued. “You ripped it!”

“No, you did!”

“It was you!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“Children!” The librarian called over from the other end of the library. Sana’s eyes flew open in fear and she slammed the book shut. 

“Sorry,” she called. The librarian smiled warmly at the two of them and said nothing more. Sana turned to Isak. “Meet me in the nonfiction section,” she hissed under her breath as the librarian slumped away.

Isak nodded once, briefly. “If you admit it’s your fault.”

She frowned. “Fine. We both ripped the page.”

“I -“

“We _both_ ,” she emphasized, “ripped the page.”

Moodily, Isak shrugged. “Fine. Let’s go.”

With a death grip on the biology book, both children trying to pull it away from the other, the two made a unsteady bumbling line as the walked to the back of the library where no one ever was — the nonfiction section, in other words. 

The plotting was not easy going. 

“Look, it doesn’t matter who ripped up the book -“

“You,” Isak interjected. 

Sana rolled her eyes. “We’ll both get in trouble for it and then they’ll call our parents. Okay?”

This got Isak’s attention. “Okay,” he mumbled. “What should we do?”

“Fix it,” Sana told him firmly. If she it with enough confidence, it would happen. Probably.

Isak waited for her to say something else but she couldn’t. “Okay,” she told him, shoulders slumping. “I don’t know how to fix it. Sorry. I just really don’t want to get in trouble.”

“I don’t want to get in trouble either,” Isak told her solemnly, placing his hand over hers on the book. It made Sana smile. “Maybe we could, I don’t know, tape it or something?”

“How?”

“With tape?” Isak looked at her like she was an idiot. 

“No,” Sana told him. “How do we get the tape?”

Isak shrugged. “Ask?”

“Oh, that’s not suspicious at all.”

Isak shrugged again, picking at the corner of the book. “Will anyone really notice a ripped page?”

But Sana just ignored him, thinking. “Okay, I got it. We tell the librarian that we need the tape because we ripped our homework, then we use the tape on the book.”

“Okay?” Isak agreed. 

“Good. Give me your homework.”

“What? No! Why?”

“To rip. Duh.”

“No! Rip yours!”

It went back and forth like that for a minute or two. Sana thought it should be Isak because he ripped the book. Isak thought it should be Sana because it was her fault he ripped the book. 

In the end, they played rock paper scissors. Sana lost. Paper beats rock. 

Next, they argued over who would go and ask the librarian. Sana thought it should be Isak because, again, he was the one who ripped the paper and he _should have been_ the one to rip his homework. 

“But I wasn’t,” he said. “So you have to do it. I can’t go up with a piece of paper that says Sana — Bakkoush on it. That’s a _girl’s_ name.”

Sana erased her name. 

“It’s _girl’s_ handwriting,” he tried next, but that was blatantly untrue. Isak’s handwriting was dutifully neat especially compared to Sana’s chicken scrawl. 

“Fine!” Isak snatched Sana’s ripped biology homework and trudged over the kind librarian who was only too willing to help. 

“Whatever,” he muttered to the librarian. 

She beamed at him. “I love that this little home has become enough of a haven that you feel comfortable coming to me in times of distress.”

Isak stared at her. Still beaming, she handed him over the tape. 

“Thanks,” he mumbled, tapping the homework up. She ruffled his hair which made him want to scowl and made Sana laugh at him from across the room which made him want to scowl even harder and rip up more pieces of her homework. 

It was on his way back to Sana, wrinkling up her homework in his tightly clenched fist that he realized his mistake. He turned around. 

“Er,” he said. “I’ve ripped other pages too. By accident. Obviously. Could I just take the tape … with me?”

“Anything for you cherubs,” the librarian said. She had not yet stopped beaming. 

Isak grabbed the tape and the homework and walked very quickly over to Sana in the nonfiction section. Shortly, he thrust the tape at her. 

“I think you should have tape it up,” she said smiling sweetly, “Because you know, you were that one that —“

“Ripped it! I know! You’ve said like, seven hundred time!” Isak threw his hands up in the air. 

“Well, you did,” Sana pointed out a little taken back. 

Angrily, Isak ripped off a piece of tape and went to the book. 

“No, I’ll do it.”

“No,” he argued, “you wanted me to do it, I’m doing.”

“Isak -“

“Sana -“ he echoed trying to push past her. 

She pushed him back. He dropped the tape. 

“Look what you’ve done! That’s your fault!” He said, too loudly, and pushed her. Sana fell down backwards, tripping over the open biology book and immediately everything stopped. 

“Sana!” Isak whispered, horrified. “Are you —“

Sana started crying. 

“I’m so sorry, are you okay? I’ll go get the teacher, I’ll —“

But Sana stopped crying and smiled at him. “Got you!” She crowed. “I’m just messing with you. You shouldn’t be mean and push people. Some people are weaker than me. You could’ve have hurt them.”

That made sense to Isak. “I’m sorry,” he told her. 

“It was …” she started to say, very slowly, even though she wasn’t sure her father would want her to, “sort of my fault too.” 

Her mother always told her that people would blame her for things that weren’t her fault and she should never take responsibility for those things. But, her mother had warned, that doesn’t mean she can just stick her head in the sand about the cons — consequen — results of her actions. So she thought her dad wouldn’t much like her saying sorry but her mom probably would. 

Isak, however, wasn’t so grateful about this confession. “Yeah, I know,” he told her. “You pushed me _first_.” He hesitated a second. “But I didn’t want to hurt you. So. I probably shouldn’t have pushed you back.”

Sana opened her mouth, but didn’t know what to say. Eventually she closed it and reached for the tape to tape up the ripped page in the biology book. When she was done, she handed it to Isak. “Here,” she said, “you can read it first.”

“Thanks?” He asked, smiling a little tentatively at her. 

“But in general, I should be the one who gets it first. Because you read really slowly.” Isak looked a bit embarrassed. Sana felt bad, but it was the truth. “Can you read?”She asked, curious.

“Yes!” Isak snapped. “Just because I’m not — I’m not great at it, doesn’t mean I can’t do it.”

“Fine, okay,” Sana agreed and rolled her eyes. “Get reading then. I want my turn before we leave.”

But Sana couldn’t stay quiet for more than five seconds and they ended up sort of bickering the entire time. 

But the next day, when Sana got to the library, Isak was waiting there. He gave her a little wave and pointed at the book he’d rescued from the shelves. 

“I talked to my dad,” he said quietly. “He said you were right and you should get to read it first because I’m not very good at reading.”

“Well I talked to my mom,” Sana said, because she had. “And my mom said that there’s no point in being better at something if you don’t use it to help people. We can read it together. She said it’s better to work together than by yourself.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

Sana smiled at him. 

 

 

 

** Age 14 **

“Oh God,” Sana moaned. “I hated those books.”

“Of course you don’t like them,” Isak replied rolling his eyes. “I liked them, so god forbid you find anything enjoyable in it.”

“I’ll tell you now the same thing I told you then: the lack of parent supervision was clearly pandering and the books were written for children to enjoy not to educate or inspire or challenge.”

“What you said then was something more along the lines of ‘this book is stupid and doesn’t make sense. Why are you reading such bad books Isak? Is it because you have no taste, Isak?’ That’s more like that you said.”

“Does it matter?” Sana asked. Jonas and Eva watched on in bemusement. 

“I just trying to tell the truth here.”

“I think the truth is that you just didn’t want to admit that the Boxcar Children books were shit.”

Isak shrugged. “Seminal literature, those books. True classics.”

“You fuck,” Sana told him and Jonas laughed. 

“Jonas!” Isak exclaimed, betrayed. “You’re supposed to be my best friend!”

Jonas shrugged, opening grinning. “Team Sana all day every day. Also, you hate reading, why are you going so hard on these books?”

“Jonas!” Isak objected again. “They’re good books, okay? Better than —“

“Don’t you dare,” Sana warned him. 

Isak held up his hands and stuck his tongue out at her. 

Jonas glanced between the two of them, eager. “What? What books?” He asked. 

Isak mumbled something into the floor. 

“What was that, Isak?” Jonas asked, clearly delighted in the turn of events. 

“Sana and I had a two person book club,” he repeated, louder. Jonas laughed at that and even Sana felt herself getting a little red. 

“See,” Jonas told them, “now you have to continue, because you can’t leave it there.”

“Fine!” Isak threw his arms up and said, very quickly. “I was reading the Boxcar Children, Sana was talking some shit and blah, blah, blah. Book club.”

“I literally cannot believe you of all people were in an actual book club as a child, Isak,” Jonas told him seriously. 

“He’s awful, isn’t he?” Sana agreed with Jonas. 

Isak wondered if he maybe would have been better off with just one friend after all but couldn't suppress his smile. He rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

 

…

 

Age 8

It started, the whole stupid club, with a whole stupid morning and a whole stupid day. She spilled the milk when she was trying to make her oatmeal and her mom hadn’t yelled or anything but she had pressed her lips together and sighed and had to spend five minutes cleaning it up. 

But that wasn’t too bad. It was just an accident. Maybe she could help her mom with dinner tonight to show her just how sorry she was. Or she could just say sorry again in the afternoon. Or do nothing, it really wasn’t the big of a deal. But Sana wanted to say something. 

But then, caught up in her thoughts, she forgot her math book on the chair next to her on the bus. She reached down in her bag at the start of class, but it was empty. With a horrifying clarity, she remembered putting down and the bus and _not_ picking it back up. 

She slumped back in her seat, feeling like an idiot. Wetness pricked uncomfortably between her eyes but Sana wasn’t going to cry over a book and some milk. She was going to make a plan. She’d ask the bus driver about it tomorrow morning. It wasn’t that big of a deal or anything. 

She raised her hand and asked to borrow a book. 

“Just for today,” the teacher told her. “I don’t want this kind of thing becoming a habit, okay? We all have to learn to be responsible for our things.”

Sana nodded, feeling humiliated. She heard a few of the other girls sniggering behind her and even if it wasn’t about her, it felt like it was. And the day only continued to go downhill from there. 

For lunch, her mom had packed her their leftover Manakeesh because there wasn’t any time to make anything new, which was her fault. And Sana didn’t even really like Manakeesh to begin with but she was starving. 

And that’s when it happened. One of the boys walking back to his desk with his lunchbox accidentally slammed into her tupperware, sending her Manakeesh spiraling to the floor. 

“What’s wrong with you?” She yelled. “Why can’t you watch where you’re going!”

“Sorry!” The boy said, looking genuinely contrite. “It was an accident. Do you want some of my sandwich?”

Sana just looked at him. She was right. He should have watched where he was going. “It’s probably harem,” Sana told him. The boy clearly did not understand. “No, thank you,” she snapped. “I’ll be fine. You’ve done enough.”

Now the boy looked annoyed but whatever. Not Sana’s problem. She turned back to grab her tupperware from the ground when the boy kicked it to the front of the room. 

Sana stood, up furious, ready to scream but the boy spoke before she could. “You should be nicer to people,” he told her. “That was really mean of you to say. It was just an accident. Get over it.”

“You kicked my tupperware! On purpose!” They were starting to draw the attention of the whole class and Sana just wanted to die inside at the thought. She would get used to hiding her irritation with the attention, but she would never get used to the attention herself. 

“Whatever,” the boy told her, “I’m sorry and everything.”

He left and Sana had to walk on over all by herself to pick up the tupperware and put her lunch back in it, stomach rumbling. She’d have to find some way to discreetly throw it away without her mom noticing or any of her stupid classmates. She put her head down on her desk, hands curled into fists, and tried to calm down. 

So when she walked into the library just wanting to read her biology chapter and go home and be alone, she wasn’t expecting to see Isak there too. But there he fucking was. 

He looked up when she came in and smiled at her, which just made her angrier, for some stupid reason. 

“Hi.”

She sat down next to him. “Hey. What book?”

“Boxcar Children. I’m on the second one. Read it, it’s good.”

Sana started to read about the stupid children who were too afraid of their grandfather and ran away and lived in a Boxcar in the woods, as if that would ever work out in reality. “This is stupid,” she told him. 

“I like it.” He shrugged defensively. “I mean, it’s alright.”

“It’s a stupid book,” she repeated. “It’s totally — unrealistically and the children are annoying and it doesn't’ make sense why there’s no adults around! Kids can’t be on there own, they can’t handle things alone!”

“I know,” Isak told her very quietly. He tilted his head sideways. “You can pick next time?”

And to her horror, Sana found herself starting to sniffle at those words. Isak was alarmed. “Sana?” He asked, voice low, tentatively reaching out a hand to place on her back. And if Sana felt at all comforted or relaxed leaning into his arms, she’d rather die than admit it.

“Okay,” Sana said eventually, voice a bit muffled, starting to feel strangely warm inside. “And I’ll pick a good book. Unlike you.”

“I bet it’ll suck,” Isak told her and she gasped. 

“Isak, you can’t say that at school!”

“You’re just chicken.” He stuck his tongue out. 

“No, shut up. You _suck_!” she replied and was gratified when his eyes flew open. 

“Sana!”

“What?”

Isak, unexpectedly, grinned at her. “You want to know a real bad word?” 

Sana, obediently, leaned in. 

“It’s the worst one, okay. It’s the mother of all swear words.” Sana leaned closer. “Fuck,” Isak said, solemnly. 

Sana didn’t look convinced. “Fuck?” she asked, in a normal voice.

“Sana!” Isak gestured at her forcefully. “You really can’t say that!”

“Yes, I can,” she replied. “It’s not a real swear word, anyway.”

“It is!”

Sana looked unimpressed. “No, it’s not. And I’m going to prove it.” Isak’s entire body seized up with terror and he leapt at Sana, trying to pull her back down to the ground with him. Sana wasn’t phased. 

Shoving Isak off, she jumping up and ran towards the librarian, Isak sprinting behind her. 

“Miss, I have a question,” she began, making Isak pull up short and lurk just in the corner of her eye. “My friend thinks ‘Fuck’ is a bad word, but it’s not, right? I mean, fuck? Fuck? It sounds so stupid.”

The librarian had gone white. “You should definitely not say that word.”

Sana’s face fell and her heart sank. “I — what?” 

“That’s not a word for children,” the librarian told her. “Your friend is right. It’s a very bad word.”

Something hot and heavy was rising up inside Sana and it made her feel sick and like her skin was too tight, strangling her blood vessels and organs and Isak was over there by the shelves smirking —

“It shouldn’t be!” She told the librarian, stubbornly. “It’s a stupid sounding word and it doesn’t sound like it means anything bad at all.”

“No word does,” the librarian replied, “it’s the history and context of the word that give it meaning, you know. There’s a lovely book of essays about that around here, somewhere. Maybe when you’re older,” the librarian continued saying things that Sana couldn’t hear or understand. 

“It sounds stupid,” she said, wishing she had something better to say, something to convey what she meant but she didn’t. “Anyway, I have to.” She didn’t finish her thought. She just left. 

“Okay!” the librarian said other things but Sana didn’t hear any of them. She turned and walked to the door, Isak still trailing behind her. 

“I was right, you know,” he said. “I told you I was right. You didn’t believe me, but I was,” he said fiercely. 

“It’s stupid,” she replied, shame still hot and curdling within her. “And you’re taste in books is horrible. You read books for babies.”

“I’m not stupid!” Isak yelled at her, shocking them both. “Shut up! You don’t know anything!” He slammed his hand against the bookshelf and pressed his mouth closed. They stood there for a second, in the school library, not saying anything, until Isak looked up and said in a much more normal, much quieter voice, “I just don’t read as fast as you, okay? I’m not stupid. I just don’t like reading.”

“Me neither,” Sana, who didn’t have anything else to say, responded. 

“Books are stupid.”

“Words are stupid,” Sana agreed. “And I don’t think you’re stupid. I don’t talk to stupid people.”

Sana watched Isak try and fail to find something to say to that and felt some of the hot, sickly shame start to fade, a bit. She thought maybe she finally said the right thing today. Maybe today wasn't the worst day Allah ever put forth onto earth.

“I don’t like being wrong,” she said, feeling useless, when it became clear Isak wasn’t going to respond to her earlier statement. 

“Me neither,” he said and they both shared a small small at that. It was nice, Sana thought. Maybe even nicer than just sulking alone. She smiled bigger at Isak. She was going to pick the _perfect_ book. He was going to hate it _so much_. 

 

 

 

Age 14 

 

“Okay, okay, give Boxcar Kids -“

“You know that isn’t the name of the series -“

“Give Boxcar Kids all the shit you want, but it got the SI Book Club started.” 

“The what?” Jonas interjected. 

Isak shot Sana a panicked look. “Don’t you —“

“The Isak/Sana Book Club,” she answered calmly. “Obviously.”

Jonas looked disappointed. Eva looked curious. Isak felt relived. 

 

 

Age 8

 

“- the Sansol and Isabel Book Club Extravaganza!” Sana announced triumphantly, like she always did. The first one to score a basket in PE got to name the club. So, in other words, Sana got to name the club. 

“Of 1912,” Isak added under his breath, like he always did. 

“Maybe you should be better at basketball,” Sana told him, like she always did. 

Isak never replied to that, mostly because she was right, he was awful at basketball. Sports in general, really. Sometimes, people would call him things like ‘sissy’ or ‘girl’ or, more recently, ‘gay’ or ‘fag’. The first time it happened, Sana yelled at them to leave him alone and Isak pushed her and told her to leave _him_ alone and stormed off. 

She’d followed him, of course, and he’d apologized eventually and so had she. Most people were too scared of Sana to talk to her or be partners with her or sit next to her in class and like, fine. But with Isak it was different, because people talked to him, they just weren’t very nice about it. 

She kept yelling at people when they were mean to him, though, even though sometimes it made Isak mad. He told her once it didn’t really make him mad but it made him feel uncomfortable and he didn’t really understand how to feel or what to do. He’d been sad that day. Sana hadn’t known what to do. She tried to bring it up again, but he seemed really embarrassed and got mad and so she stopped and just let it be.

Sana wondered if maybe she shouldn’t be yelling at people. She wanted to ask her mom, but she and Isak weren’t the in the same third, fourth, or fifth grade class though, and in sixth grade, Isak had found some other friends and most of the comments had died down by then anyway and so she never asked. 

 

 

Age 14

 

“Anyway, the whole book club was a shit show.”

“What?” Jonas asked. 

“We kept picking books we thought the other person would hate,” Isak explained quickly, even if that wasn’t the whole truth. “It went … poorly,” he said, lamely. 

“What, you guys got into a really big fight one day?” Eva asked. 

“No, no. That would actually make sense,” Isak replied. 

“We just kept picking really good books,” Sana said laughing. “I remember picking the Alanna series because I thought it would be about girls and he wouldn’t be interested and he actually finished it before me.”

Jonas playfully raised his eyebrows. “Early bloomer, huh? A playa from day one?”

Sana shot him a look. Jonas ducked his head bashfully. “Sorry, sorry,” he apologized immediately. 

Isak made a face. “It wasn’t as bad as that time I picked Agatha Christy to go with the murder theme and fucking Sana over here got the fucking killer right.”

Jonas looked impressed. Eva looked a bit confused and Sana suspected that she didn’t know who Agatha Christy was but didn’t want to explain and make her feel bad. 

“Agatha Christy, you know who that is, right Ev?” Jonas asked. Sana winced internally. 

“Uh, yeah, I’ve heard of her. I don’t think I’ve read anything by her though,” Eva replied and even Isak got it. 

“Isak got really into Maya Angelou’s poetry,” Sana blurted out. Predictably, Isak whipped around to glare at her, breaking out into protests immediately, but it was worth it seeing Eva’s self-loathing grimace be replaced with a smile. 

“Isak, do you know why the caged bird sings?” Jonas asked, delighted. He turned to Eva. “It’s a reference to -“

“I know who Maya Angelou is!” Eva snapped, smile flipping upside down. Jonas held his hands up in surrender. “Anyway, the book club sounds like it was super cool. I wish me and my friends had thought of doing something like that when we were your age!”

And maybe Eva was right. All things said and done, Sana wouldn’t trade Sanasol and Isabel’s Book Club Extravaganza for anything.


	2. Fights, Family, and the Looming Specter of Puberty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, i'm alternating point of views, so this one is isak's point of view. enjoy!
> 
> oh, and shit, before i forgot: in this universe, every book ever written has been translated into norwegian ok.

**Age 11**

 

Isak met Jonas when he was eleven and in the big middle school building without Sana in any of his classes. Jonas was smart. That was the first thought Isak would allow himself to have about Jonas. Isak hated english class. It’s not really that he had a problem with reading, but he hated talking about it and he never knew how to say what he wanted to say. I’m as creative as a stump, he’d tell Sana one day. 

“Who are you to besmirch stumps like that?” she’d respond. 

But anyway, Isak hated english class and he hated middle school and not knowing anyone and having all these stupid growth spurts happening and how suddenly boys and girls were these separate things that everyone else in the world seems to care about. 

He mostly just wanted Sana to still be around. He wouldn’t hate it quite so much, he was sure, if he was with her. Everyone else was so fucking stupid.  

And that was how he met Jonas: slouched down in his seat, playing with the chords on his hoodie, mentally hating everyone in the room. The teacher said something to him that Isak didn’t hear. He looked up, confused. The teacher was obviously waiting for him to say something. 

“Jonas Vasquez,” the boy next to him said. “And, as for my favorite book, the question you want everyone to answer,”  _ okay now he’s laying it on a bit thick _ , Isak thought.  _ Does he think I’m an idiot? _   “I like  _ Capital _ , by Karl Marx. It’s about the abolishment of private property to create a communist state.  _ I’m _ a communist.”

The teacher didn’t seem like she knew how to handle to that. She blinked heavily. “Thank you for that introduction, Jonas, but I was actually talking to your friend here.”

“Isak Valtersen,” Isak said automatically, staring at Jonas. “I don’t read much.” It’s a lie but it’s what he always said when teachers asked. He wondered what Sana would think about a communist. A real one, too.  

“What’s the most recent book you’ve read?” She asked. 

“Um.” Isak made himself look away from Jonas. What was the last book he read? It had been Sana’s choice, he knew that. Which meant it was one of those books that adults liked off one of those lists. Isak would just grab a book off the shelf of the teen section but Sana liked to pick an Important book. That way, she’d say, it’s either definitely good or I can use it to impress people later. “Um, it’s about that kid and he makes cartoons and —  _ Absolutely True Diary Of a Part Time Indian _ !” He said quickly and triumphantly. The teacher looked impressed which is  _ not  _ what Isak wanted but no one else seemed to care and the class moved on easily. 

Jonas looked over at Isak and smiled. Isak looked down, but still smiled back. 

“Hey,” Jonas said after class. “Wanna get lunch?” And that was that. 

And then Isak had friends that weren’t Sana. Or, a friend. 

 

…

 

Isak didn’t mention Jonas to Sana, at first. He wasn’t sure how to bring it up. He just ... stopped showing up to the library on Wednesdays and Fridays. Which was fine. It wasn’t a problem. He was still there on all the other days. 

And Sana didn’t ask. Isak wanted her to ask because he wanted to tell her about Jonas. He just didn’t know how to start. 

He’d tried googling it, but  _ How to tell your sort of friend from the library that you’ve made another friend without like making it weird or anything  _ was too specific or something. For whatever reason, he’d gotten mostly garbage and then some annoying articles about ‘good friends drifting apart in middle school’. Isak didn’t even know if he and Sana were really ‘good friends’ but if they were, they definitely weren’t drifting apart. 

So Isak continued to say nothing and wait for Sana to ask. 

Sana asked instead, “hey, Isak. What are your classes this year?”

He told her. It was basic stuff. Math. Earth science. Linn. Josefine. Tarjei for P.E. last period on Wednesdays and Fridays. 

“And you?”

Sana shrugged. “The usual.”

Isak nodded, accepting her non-answer. “Um,” Isak said, fingers desperately tapping against his thigh. “Why though?”

“No reason,” Sana replied quickly, mentally cursing herself out. 

“Oh,” Isak said and looked back down. 

“It’s just, you’re not here on Wednesdays and Fridays.”

“Oh,” Isak repeated. 

“I was just wondering,” Sana said, with a forced shrug. Isak squinted his eyes at her. 

“Um, yeah,” Isak responded. “I’ve been hanging out with this guy named Jonas. We go to the skate park?” He asked, more than said. “Sometimes. I’m not very good, but Jonas really likes it.”

“That sounds cool,” Sana told him with a smile. 

“You should come sometime,” Isak suggested, really quickly, before he could talk himself out of it. 

“Yeah, it could be fun.” Sana didn’t come off half as cool as she would have liked but Isak didn’t notice. 

“More fun than reading  _ The Blind Assassin _ ,” he teased cautiously. 

“I’m sorry, whose book choice was that?”

Isak’s mouth quirked up. “Yours,” he said. 

Sana opened her mouth in mock outrage. “Mine?” She demanded. “No, no, no, that behemoth was all you.” 

Isak’s grin grew a bit. “You should’ve just read  _ A Series of Unfortunate Events _ .”

“I will kill you,” Sana told him solemnly. “I will beat you to death with the books in this library, I swear to God.”

 

…

 

Isak introduced Jonas to Sana like a child showing off a puppy he’d found and dragged home with him. It was all she could do to refrain from patting him on the head and calling him a good boy. 

“Jonas is a communist,” he told her, bouncing on his feet.  

“Whatever,” Jonas said, “it’s really not a big deal. Capitalism is just destroying our basic humanity, you know? It’s like shit, yeah? So you’re not even really a person if you support it, you know?”

Sana nodded as if she did know when in fact she absolutely did not. She tried to make eye contact with Isak but he was looking at Jonas. 

“You skate?” He asked. 

“No.” Sana told him. 

“Cool,” he nodded. “Isak didn’t either. He’s getting pretty okay now, though.”

Sana raised an eyebrow. “Isak? Getting good at something athletic?”

“I’m not that pathetic,” he mumbled, elbowing her. 

Sana snorted and Isak finally looked at her, grinning. 

“You should try skating,” Isak said. 

Sana shook her head no.

“You scared that I’m going to beat you?”

“I could beat you blindfolded with both hands behind my back,” Sana asserted while Jonas snorted in the background. 

“Man,” he said, still laughing, “I like you Bakkoush. You can stick around.”

Sana rolled her eyes at him but liked that he said that. It was nice to hear, even if Jonas was kind of an idiot sometimes. 

  
  
  


**Age 13**

 

Eva became fast friends with Ingrid, which meant that Isak heard about Eva all the time. From Jonas, at least. And then, one night, when he was sleeping over at Jonas’s, Jonas rolled over and said, “I think I’m in love with her,” and Isak’s heart stopped. 

“Good thing she’s your girlfriend,” he joked weakly.

“No. Not Ingrid. Eva.”

“Oh.” Isak replied. Luckily, he thought, Jonas wasn’t friends with him for his verbosity. 

“It’s shit, isn’t it?” He asked Isak. “I mean, I can’t be with her. I just can’t. So it’s shit, isn’t it?” 

Yeah, Isak thought. It’s shit. “Why can’t you, though?”

“I’m with Ingrid, aren’t I?”

“So?” Isak asked. “Break up with her. You probably should anyway, if you’re in love with someone else.”

Jonas seemed on the verge of agreeing but stopped right at the edge. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t want people to think I’m a player, you know?” he asked. Jonas was always doing that. Asking instead of saying. Waiting for some sort of agreement or acknowledgement.  

Isak rolled his eyes. “Bro, with that face, no one with eyes could think you’re a player.”

“Thanks, Isak,” Jonas told him dryly. 

“No problem, dude,” Isak clapped his hand on Jonas’s back. “I gotcha.”

They were silent for a moment, lying there still in the darkness, shoulders touching, Isak’s side burning, and then Jonas spoke again. 

“I kissed her,” Jonas said. “I mean, we kissed each other.”

Isak forced himself not to react, to stay very still and keep his voice very even. “You have to break up with Ingrid,” he said in a monotone. 

“Am I —“ Jonas asked the darkness and, apparently, Isak, “Am I a bad person?”

Isak swallowed dryly. This felt like one of those moments he was spectacularly bad at and Jonas was spectacularly good at, where he was supposed to know just the right words to say to make Jonas never think that again. Because Jonas was the best person. Like a star, Isak thought. Jonas was like a wish he’d made on a star when he was a kid. But he couldn’t say that, because that was gay. 

So, in the end, Isak didn’t say anything and Jonas didn’t repeat the question. 

But in the morning, over juice and eggs when the sun was still low and the day was still new and the sleepiness was still lingering in both boys, Isak said, “I guess I don’t know if you’re a good person or not. I think it’s something you should answer yourself, you know. But, um. For what it’s worth and everything. I don’t think you're awful.”

 

…

 

In middle school, for Jonas, two big things of note happened to him. The first, he would always say, was that he saved Isak from his own incompetence in English class. The second was that Eva Mohn moved to Oslo. It took him until that night with Isak, though, for him to tell anyone. 

Something ugly rolled in Isak’s stomach as soon as he left and he was filled with a restless sort of energy. At home, he couldn’t stop pacing the floor, bored but without a clear goal. Emailing Jonas, for whatever reason, was so completely out of the question for Isak right then and he didn’t think Sana would be back from the Mosque yet. It was still early and it was a long drive. 

He walked over to his mom’s door and tapped on it. “Mama?” He called softly. She didn’t respond. He went into the kitchen, opening the pantry. Some biscuits and cereal. He closed the cupboard. His dad was sitting down and glaring at his computer. 

“Oh, hey Isak,” he said, tilting the screen down. 

“Hey,” Isak mumbled. “Why’s mama still sleeping? Shouldn’t we wake her up?”

“No,” his dad replied shortly. 

“Ok,” Isak said. 

His dad rubbed his eyes and looked up. “Can you take your sister to the park or something? I want to get some work done tonight.”

“Dad …” Isak complained. 

“Isak, you’re mother needs this right now. We all have to make some sacrifices, take on some responsibility.” He said it in his normal, detached voice. His dad always seemed on the verge of falling over into a slump and never getting up. 

“Fine,” Isak groaned, because he always kind of did what his father said, even if his father couldn’t enforce a command to save his life. He liked that his father needed him sometimes and was more scared than anything by the thought that his father didn’t really need him or want him either. Maybe his father didn’t care if he helped or not because his father didn’t care about him, or them. And so he didn’t really say no. 

“Lea!” He yelled into the house. 

An eight year old with short mousy looking brown hair poked her head around the door to the hallway. 

“What?” She demanded. 

“I’m taking you to the park,” Isak told her. 

“No, thank you,” Lea responded and disappeared. 

Isak glared at his dad. With a long suffering sigh, his dad got up, yelling Lea’s name. Lea came back into the kitchen. “It’s a nice day out,” his dad said. “Are you sure you won’t go to the park with your brother?”

“No,” said Lea clearly, with her large eyes opened as wide as they could. “I don’t really want to. I’m having my dolls wage war right now. I wanna do that.”

“Lea …” their father said. He cast around for something else to say. “You can wage war with barbies when you get back.”

Lea shook her head. “No!” she whined. 

“Why don’t you take the dolls to the park? It’s a bigger,” he cast around for a word, “battle field.”

The corners of Lea’s mouth twisted. “I don’t wanna.”

“Just for ten or fifteen minutes,” their father wheedled. 

Lea nodded sharply, held up two fingers and left. 

Isak’s father turned to him. “Can you make sure she’s actually getting ready and not burning anything down?”

Isak crossed his arms. “I don’t want to take Lea right now.”

“Okay, fine,” his father said after a pause. 

“What?” Isak asked, arms falling stiffly to his sides. 

“If you don’t want to, I can’t make you.”

Lea showed up with an armful of dolls. “Okay. I’m ready. Here.” She shoved her dolls at Isak. 

Isak’s dad stood up. “Here, sweetie, give them to me. Isak doesn’t want to come today, so I’m going to take you.” Lea shrugged. 

“Okay. But if you’re coming, I want to bring the matches.”

Isak’s dad thought about it. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

“Wait, no,” Isak said, mouth moving before he could even think about what he was saying. “I changed my mind, I can take her. I can do it. I’ll take her. She’s my sister.”

“But you said you didn’t want to,” his dad pointed out. 

“I changed my mind!” Isak snapped. 

“Okay, no problem.” His dad slouched back down into his chair, putting the dolls on the table. Isak walked over and picked them up. 

“Is there a bag around here we could use?” He asked. 

“Try the cupboard,” his dad suggested. 

“Whatever,” Isak rolled his eyes. There were no bags in the cupboard. He knew that. His dad knew that. Mama always burned them. 

“Come on.”

Lea came trotting after. “Does this mean I can’t use the matches?” she asked. 

“Yes,” Isak said at the exact same time his dad said “no”. 

Isak glared at his dad. “We’re not going to use the matches at a public park where I’m meeting my friends,” he pointed out. “Maybe when you get back home.” It would look so stupid. They’d look like white trash or something. The barbie dolls were embarrassing enough. 

God, Lea was so fucking weird and his dad didn’t give a shit. His dad didn’t care that Lea burned her barbie dolls or that Isak spent most of his nights over at Jonas’s or that Isak got a B in biology last year. He’d done it on purpose, to see if he could, but his dad didn’t even say anything. Just told him to study up for next year and clapped him on the back. 

And Jonas had this new girlfriend but he was in love with this other girl and it made Isak’s skin tight and he didn’t know why or how to make it stop even though it was easy for everyone else in his family to just not care, apparently, and —

“Sana?” He stopped short, surprised to see his friend sitting there under a tree reading. “What are you reading?” 

Sana’s cheeks, he noticed, were red. Slowly, she turned the cover towards him.  _ A Bad Beginning.  _

A bubble of hysterical laughter escaped Isak. He fell down next her, gasping and laughing so hard he started crying and then the laughter faded but the tears didn’t and he felt Sana put an arm around him. He would shove it away in a minute. 

“It was,” she admitted sheepishly, “a better choice than a seven hundred page manifesto on feminism that didn’t use proper quotations marks for the aesthetic.”

Isak hiccuped and snorted. “It’s because I’m always right and you’re always wrong,” he told her. 

“I take it back,” Sana said. “I take it all back.  _ A Series of Unfortunate Events _ was horrible and still is.”

“I can’t believe you’re reading -“  _ that _ , he wanted to say. What he said instead was, “a book for nine year olds.”

Sana hit him gently with the book. “Because I don’t give a damn,” she told him in her best american rapper voice. 

Isak laughed normally at that. 

“Isak,” said Lea, who had come over. Isak had forgotten about her. “I lost my doll’s hand.” Lea’s bottom lip was starting to wobble a bit so Isak guessed this was probably important to her. 

“So?” Sana asked. 

Lea’s lip started wobbling worse. 

“No, no,” Sana said. “I don’t mean it like that. I just mean — isn’t it pretty badass that she lost an arm?”

“Sana!” Isak hissed. “Don’t say badass in front of my baby sister.”

“That’s your sister?” Sana asked, delighted. 

Isak sighed but made reluctant introductions. “Lea, Sana. Sana, Lea.”

“Is she your girlfriend?” Lea asked. 

“Don’t be stupid,” Isak told her. “No. She’s just my friend.”

“His special friend.”

“Shut the fu — fun up,” Isak replied, barely avoiding cursing. 

“I know the word fuck,” Lea told them both. 

Isak shared a smirk with Sana. “Sana didn’t. When she was your age,” he teased and Sana’s cheeks got even redder.

Lea looked surprised. “But dad says it all the time.”

“My dad didn’t,” Sana said. 

Lea seemed to accept this. “Why aren’t you his girlfriend?” Lea asked. 

“Don’t ask her that,” Isak said. At least Sana looked as uncomfortable as he felt with this sort of questioning. 

“My barbie’s girlfriend is my other barbie,” Lea said. “It’s because they love each other. Do you not love Isak?”

“It’s a different kind of love,” Sana replied at the same time as Isak. 

“But they’re both girls!”

“So?” Sana directed it at Isak this time. 

“I mean, nothing,” Isak said. “Just — surprise.”

“Good,” Sana said, staring hard at Isak. “Because there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Yeah,” Isak agreed uncomfortably, surprised with her confidence. “I know.”

“What’s okay?” Lea asked.

Isak dropped his head between his knees while Sana laughed at him. “You think this is so funny?” He asked her. “You explain it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a girl having a girlfriend,” Sana said simply. 

Lea looked at her like she was an idiot. “Duh,” she said. “I know that.”

Sana bit her lip to stop from smiling or smirking at Isak and let Lea haphazardly wander her way back to the other pile of dolls. 

“Hey, Sana,” Isak asked, hesitatingly. “Is -- Islam -- I mean -- what do you think about -- ” he halted. 

“Go on,” Said Sana, with a knowing look. Her answer was important to him. He wanted to ask.

He gave up. “Never mind.”

A few minutes later, Lea came up to the two of the them holding a muddy barbie doll hand. “I found it,” she said. “Can we go home now?”

“I — Okay,” Isak agreed. He turned to Sana. “Email me?” 

She nodded. 

 

…

 

_ Isak _

_ This is me, emailing you. By the way, Justin was right all those years ago.  _ A Series of Unfortunate Events _ is bomb af. We should revive the book club just to read it. _

 

_ Sana  _

 

…

 

**Sana**

**No. Literally no.**

**Isak**

 

…

 

**Sana**

**I wanted to ask you at the park about Islam and homosexuality. I didn’t know the two things were compatible. Sorry if this is inappropriate or offensive.**

**Isak**

 

  1. **sorry again**



 

…

 

_ Isak _

 

_ Not gonna lie, it’s kind of rude. But I always knew you were kind of asshole when you ripped that page of the third grade biology book and wanted to just put it back instead of fixing it and I still came in and sat next to you the next day.  _

_ Islam sees everyone as having equal worth. Being created in the eyes of Allah. If you are loving Allah and praising him, I don’t think Allah cares. Allah is love, you know? Not hate. People hate. Allah couldn’t hate. Because he’s love. He wouldn’t hate someone just for loving.  _

 

_ Sana _

 

…

  
  


**Age 9**

 

The first fight Isak and Sana really had since starting Isabel and Sanasol’s Book Club Extravaganza (of 1912) -- the IS&BCE (of 1912) for short -- was over  _ A Series of Unfortunate Events _ . 

It was Isak’s turn to pick the book and Sana  _ tried _ , okay, she had tried. But everything in the world was already too awful and she hated that the narrator knew everything and it was just a book about horrible things happening over and over again with no real plot and no way to stop it and no control. And it wasn’t even realistic!

Or, at least, that’s what she told Isak. 

“It’s my turn to choose,” he pointed out. 

“I should be able to veto it,” she argued. 

“No!”

“Isak!”

“No! It’s not fair!”

“It is too!”

“Sana,” he whined, “I really — it’s my turn.” He couldn’t say he really wanted to read the book because then she’d ask why and he wouldn’t have an answer for that. 

“So? I don’t want to. Pick another.”

Isak stomped his foot. “Stop being such a baby, Sana!”

That stung. “I’m a baby? You only want to read it because  _ Julian  _ is!”

“Shut up!” Isak flushed. “No, I don’t! I didn’t even know he liked reading!”

“Why are you lying? I saw you staring at him at lunch!” Sana accused. “I was with you when  _ we _ heard him say that they were ‘like, super epic, dude’ to his friends!”

“You don’t know anything!” He spat at her. “You don’t know anything, about anything, okay? Just because you’re okay not having any friends, doesn’t mean I am!”

“Look, can we just not read the stupid book?” She asked. She didn’t want to start crying or anything in front of some stupid idiot like Isak. And it wasn’t like she thought she had friends — she knew she didn’t. He didn’t have to say it, though. 

“No, we’re reading the book,” he insisted. 

“No, I’m not!”

“You have to!” Were the words that really sealed the deal. 

“No, I don’t! I don’t have to do anything!”

“Fine! But if you don’t read a book, you can’t be in the book club!”

“Good!” Sana snarled. “I don’t want to be in a book club that chooses such stupid books!” She stormed away and, breath hitching, Isak shoved the book against the wall as hard as he could. 

“Fine!” He yelled after her, but it didn’t really have any paunch. He pushed the bookshelf again, but it started to shake and — God, no — fall. Isak rushed to prop it up or something but the books were already starting to rain down off the shelves. 

Isak felt his eyes start to water and he sat down, slamming his fists against the ground. He wasn’t going to cry. 

It was just that he didn’t want I&SBCE (of 1912) to end. And he liked Sana. He didn’t mean to say it. He said things he didn’t mean, a lot. It was just hard to put his feelings or thoughts into words. They just felt too complicated or dumb or childish and he’d never really had anyone that wanted to listen before Sana.

She should have just read the book! What was her problem? Everyone else in the class, practically, loved it. Everyone else thought it was good. Not, he insisted to that treacherous voice inside his head, just Julian. Why couldn’t Sana just read it? 

He could’ve just read it without her, though. But he liked it, doing things with her. He liked that he wasn’t alone anymore. Whatever, it was fine. He would just read the stupid book and — he looked up. 

Oh, right. The books. The bookshelf. He heaved himself up to his feet. 

“Excuse me …”

Isak screeched. It was high and ungodly and he had never been more grateful that no one came to the library except some strange weirdo now looking at his sideways. 

“Sorry,” the kid said, laughing a little. Isak tensed defensively. The kid looked like he was a few years older. And he was tall, Isak thought. So tall. Isak stepped back. 

“No problem,” he said, trying to play off his humiliating moment of terror like it was some normal thing that just happened all the time and was therefore no big deal. 

“I was going to —“ the boy started. “Do you need some help?”

Isak looked at the bookshelf, mostly to have something to do with his eyes which always seemed to be a problem for him for some reason. Sana was the one who was good at figuring out how to fix things. She always made a plan and she made it seem so easy and so possible when Isak got overwhelmed by the simplest of decisions. And then, to his abject horror, the water in his eyes started to overflow. He didn’t want to cry, and yet. He was. 

“Aw, come on,” the guy said as Isak wiped furiously at his eyes. “I’m looking for someone, but it can wait a few minutes.”

Isak shook his head, not quite trusting his voice but the guy ignored him and shoved the bookshelf back up. Then he bent down and whispered, “I bet, if we go together, we can get all the books back on the shelf before anyone notices.”

He wasn’t so intimidating all crouched down like that and Isak nodded quickly. 

“I bet I’ll stack more than you,” the guy said. 

“Like heck you will,” Isak replied, surprising both himself and the other boy, using the strongest language he dared. The boy looked delighted and laughed. 

“Okay, three, two - wait, stop, that’s cheating,” the boy laughed, trying to grab onto Isak but Isak was fast. “Fine, fine, it’s going to be like that.” And with those words, the boy dropped to the ground and the next few minutes was filled with silence and breathless grunts as Isak and the boy grabbed armfuls of books at random, shoving them onto shelves. 

They were almost done and Isak was about to grab the last book when he got how to win and just stopped. 

The boy grabbed the last book up as quickly as he could and as soon as he did, Isak said, “Done!”

The boy stopped. He nodded at Isak, a little admiringly. “Dude,” he said, “that’s kind of cold blooded. I like it.”

Isak fought down a smile. “It doesn’t matter how fast or slow you work, person with the last book loses.”

“Did you just trick me?” The boy asked. “Was I, an amazing supercool middle schooler, just fooled, bamboozled, confounded by a mere four grader?”

“Yeah, I kind of think you were dude.”

He laughed. Isak grinned. “Alright,” the boy said, “so we’ve taken care of your pretty ridiculous problem, wounding my pride while we were at it. You think you could help me?”

“Sure,” Isak shrugged. 

“Do you know Sana Bakkoush?”

Isak let his head fall backwards. “Yes,” he told the ceiling, fighting down what was either a hysterical giggle or a groan. 

“Oh,” the boy said, somewhat taken aback by the Isak’s reaction. “Are you — friends, or something?”

Isak shrugged. Again. He worried that he shrugged too much sometimes. Whatever. Sometimes he just didn’t know what to say. Like now. 

“Cool,” he replied. He added, “she’s my sister. My name’s -“

“Elias?” Came Sana’s voice from behind Isak by the bathrooms. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s like, 3:30. 3:40, even, sis. You were late and I know you like to hang out with that Isak kid at the library. And then I ran into this other kid,” and Isak would have given Donald Trump himself all his money if he could stop Elias from finishing that sentence, “crying by the bookshelves. I helped him out a bit. But where’s Isak? You talk about him all the time. I wanna meet him.”

“Um,” Isak said. “Hi?”

“What?” Elias said.

“That’s Isak,” Sana said with a heavy voice, not really looking at him. Her eyes looked red and she was fiddling with the edges of her shirt anxiously. It was almost unnoticeable.

Elias turned around. “ _ You’re _ Isak?” He asked. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Isak really, really didn’t want to shrug for what had to be like the thousandth time but then there he was, shrugging. 

“I’m Sana’s brother,” Elias told him, “Her older,  _ cooler _ brother.”

Sana rolled her eyes and even started to smile a bit. “Let’s go, Elias.”

“Okay, okay,” Elias said. “Bye-bye Isak.”

 

… 

 

The next day, Isak thought about avoiding the library. And he might’ve done it. If he could have. As it was, his parents were at work and he didn’t have the money for a bus. So, he went to the library. Sana was already there, sitting at a table and biting her lower lip. 

Their biology book was in front of her, but unopened. She looked up when Isak entered, startled. Their eyes briefly made contact and Isak swallowed. Isak didn’t know what else to do, so he walked over and sat next to her. 

“Hey,” he said, real quiet. 

“Hi,” she replied. “Are you — Did you want to read the chapter?”

Isak physically restrained himself from shrugging. “Yeah, sure,” he said in a forced casual sort of voice. “Did you?”

“It’s important for my classes,” Sana said equally stiffly. “I don’t really have a choice. Anyway, my brother isn’t finished until 3:20.”

“He seems nice,” Isak offered. 

Sana just shook her head fondly and opened the book up. 

They read the chapter more or less in silence, Isak tapping Sana’s shoulder when he was ready for her to turn the page. 

The next day, it was more of the same. The day after, the same. For the rest of the week, the two of them came to the library, said their awkward greetings and sat down and read the book without saying much else. And then they left.

But on Friday, that sort of peace came to a grinding and inevitable halt. 

Friday, of course, was Book Club Day. It was the day they chose a book to take home over the weekend. They’d talk about it Monday. Which had gone great the last time. 

Isak decided that it would be best to just not say anything and maybe never mention it or books or reading ever again. He sat down, failing to not look nervous and opened up the biology book. His eyes, however, were glued to the door, waiting for Sana to enter. When she did, he started slighting, knees banging up against the smooth underside of the table. 

He gave her an aborted sort of wave and ducked his head. 

“So, it’s Book Club Day,” Sana said, immediately. “Are we picking another book?”

“Um,” Isak said. 

“I’ve decided to be the bigger person,” Sana told him magnanimously. “Do you know what that means?”

Isak shook his head. 

“It means you can choose the book this week.”

Isak’s jaw dropped. “That’s like, the bare minimum!” He sputtered. 

“Fine,” Sana muttered. “You can choose next week’s book too.”

“That’s not better!” Isak cried, incredulous. 

“I —“ Sana cut herself off, looking unsure for the first time that Isak could really remember. He looked closer and saw her eyes darting off to the side and her foot tapping against the floor. He missed her, he thought. So much. Even her utterly alien directness. It got him out of his head a bit. Sana made things clearer. Things made sense and they weren’t so complicated and they always seemed so beautiful. 

He almost understood why people were religious when he talked to Sana. But then he’d remember his mom and he’d remember how ugly religion was and that it was just Sana who could make it beautiful. It wouldn’t be beautiful for him. 

Isak felt worse than he ever felt before. “Okay, but you can veto it. If you want. I’m, you know. The book club is for life,” he eventually said. “No one can be kicked out.”

“What?” Sana looked up at him, completely shocked. 

“I guess you were right,” he told her. “No one should really have to read things that make them uncomfortable.”

“My dad says that good books should make you uncomfortable,” Sana replied, with a lilting sort of note to her voice. Isak thought it might be hope. 

Isak snorted. “That’s why adults are idiots,” he told her. 

“They’re morons,” Sana agreed, “and they think they’re so smart when they talk about all their pain but they’re really just making everyone else feel bad and nothing gets better and it never will and maybe they don’t need to bring it up everyone two seconds! No one’s going to disrespect you if you drop the facade to be an actual person for two seconds!”

“… Yeah,” Isak said with a little ‘woot!’. 

Sana cleared her throat, looking like she was regretting her outburst. “It’s because I’m always right,” she told him, trying to change the subject. 

“No?” Isak objected loudly, laughing. “You’re not?”

Sana raised an eyebrow. “You wanna test me?”

“Do I want to test you? Did the chicken want to cross the road Sana?”

“So that’s a yes?”

Isak scoffed at her. “Come with me.” He walked all the way up to the front desk where the librarian sat. “Hey.”

“Hello -“ the librarian started. 

Isak cut her off quickly. The librarian’s greetings were often long and pointless and Isak had a goal. “What’s the hardest mystery novel here?”

The librarian’s eye’s narrowed in thought. “Wait here,” she said. It was probably the least Isak had ever heard her say in his life. He was pleasantly surprised. She returned twenty seconds later with two books. She handed one to Isak and one to Sana. “Murder on the Orient Express. Agatha Christie. Good luck figuring that one out.”

 

…

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so world's are starting to collide here! Anyone surprised the tall boy was Elias? And re, isaks family, I see them as people doing their best to handle a hard situation but doing your best doesn't mean handling it well.
> 
> Up next: more on sana's outburst, hijabs and new friends in eva and jamilla. I'm actually really hype about the next chapter, sana's pov, which i've already mapped out pretty thoroughly and should be up in about a week so get hype with me yo. also, dear god in heaven above please someone be my beta i have many ideas and so many issues with organization and i promise i can take criticism i'm here to get better, you know? <3
> 
>  
> 
> [Hit me up on tumblr if you'd be willing to beta for me!](http://turtles-whynot.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> And comments like. they fucking make my day, okay? and they let me know how people are responding to something i'm putting out there. but also thanks to everyone whose even reading this? <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sana: 1, Puberty: more than 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> um, major major spoilers for the blind assassin by margret atwood?

**Age 15 (high school)**

 

After Jonas and Eva broke up, after Isak broke up Jonas and Eva, he and Sana stopped talking. 

 

 

 

 

**Age 10 (fifth grade)**

 

Isak, when Sana entered the library on Monday, was furiously reading  _ The Blind Assassin _ . 

“This is the worst book you’ve picked,” Isak told her immediately. “It reaches new heights of awful.”

Sana stuck her nose in the air. “I happen to love it. I think it’s a great book.” Isak scoffed, but Sana just continued. “Margaret Atwood is a really good author. She’s famous and  _ everything _ .”

“Literally just summarize what’s been going on and I’ll shut up.”

“Um,” Sana said, stalling. “You don’t know?”

“Neither do you!” Isak pointed out with a laugh. 

Sana tilted her head. “What is this? Are you calling me out? It sounds like I’m being called out here.”

“Sounds like?” he asked. “What, are you afraid?”

“No,” Sana said leaning forward across the table. “Just giving you your chance to back out with dignity intact.”

Isak’s eyebrows shot up. “Excuse you? I’m the greatest at everything? Up to and including summarizing your shitty book choices?”

“Prove it.”

Isak crossed his arms and stuck his tongue out. “Okay. There’s like this story. And then the other story that’s like the true story? And it’s super boring and depressing and the worst book you’ve ever chosen. Also the one sister killed herself?” Isak added, hesitantly. “I think?”

“You think?” was Sana’s response. 

“I freaking know,” Isak replied instantly. 

Sana laughed. 

“See, I’m the best book reader.”

“Except it takes you a year and a half to finish.”

“Hey!” Isak objected. “I finished last week’s book in a year and a quarter! Stop slandering my good name and speed-reading abilities!”

Sana smiled blindingly, dimples showing. “You slander your own “abilities” just fine without me.”

Isak flashed her an answering smile and said, “I’ve never slandered anything in my life.”

“Oh, really?” Sana asked. 

Isak gulped jokingly and shook his head. “Nope, never.”

“Not even —“

“NEVER!” He interrupted her in a screechy voice that drew the attention of the librarian and the one other student in the library. Isak blushed red. 

“Noteventhetimeyoutoldme,” Sana said as fast as she could, taking in a huge breath, “that Tamora Pierce was the worst author,” she took another breath, “and then I found you sneaking into the library to,” another breath, “check out every book they had by her?”

“Nope,” Isak told her with false confidence and a worryingly not-horrible poker face. “That never happened.”

Sana raised an eyebrow at him. “Really, Isak? Lying?”

“Never happened,” Isak repeated, this time fighting to keep down a smile. 

“Yeah,” Sana said, false casual, “you know, you’re right, Tamora Pierce is pretty mediocre -“

“You shut your mouth Sana Bakkoush she is a God amongst men!” Isak interrupted, finally letting the smile take over her face. 

“See?” Sana said, feeling smug. “I pick  _ great _ books. I picked Tamora Pierce. So, trust me on this too.”

Isak’s eyes bugged out. “Sana, this book is like seven hundred pages, everyone is sexist and it’s from like, the 1930s or something and it’s clearly written for real adults to study in real adult book school.”

Unfortunately, maybe, for Isak, this only made Sana want to read the book more. She tightened her shoulders and told him, “if I can get a 6 in maths, I can read this book.” Isak stared at her, blatantly skeptical. “Give me until Friday. I’ll read the stuffing out of this book.” 

“So,” Isak asked hopefully, perking up, “Does this mean I don't have to read it?”

Sana put both her palms carefully down on the table. For effect. Slowly, she lifted up her head and leaned across the table while holding eye contact with Isak. He didn’t look nearly as intimidated as the Bad Guys in those films her brother didn’t want Mamma knowing he watched but Sana could live with that. It was her first attempted intimidation. She would get better. Maybe she could blackmail Elias into showing her more movies. “Yes,” she enunciated clearly. 

Isak slumped. “It’s so bad,” he told her. “So bad. And  _ long _ .”

Sana didn’t say anything back but leaned against her chair and aggressively opened up  _ The Blind Assassin _ . To read. Aggressively. In Isak’s general direction. 

In a show of dominance. 

Judging from Isak’s snort and the impossibility of aggressively reading a book as annoyingly dense as  _ The Blind Assassin _ , it was an unsuccessful display. 

Not even a minute in and Sana was already starting to regret this entire thing.  

 

 

 

 

**Age 11 (sixth grade)**

“So,” Isak came up to Sana in the cafeteria. “Jonas has a girlfriend.”

“Who?” Sana asked, wrinkling up her nose. 

“Ingrid,” Isak said. 

“She’s his girlfriend?” Sana asked. Isak shrugged. The shrug was comforting, in it’s own way. 

“Did you know he liked her?” 

“Yeah,” Isak admitted. “He mentioned it a few times.”

“I’m happy for him,” she decided. “Are you —” she paused, unsure how to put it. “Are you dating anyone?”

Isak blanched. “Ugh, no,” he said immediately.

“Do you like anyone?” She forced herself to ask, mentally willing him not to answer. 

“No,” Isak replied. 

“Cool,” Sana said. 

“Um,” Isak said just as haltingly as she had. “Do you — like — anyone?”

Sana shook her head. “Out of this bunch of idiots?” she asked. Isak snorted and nodded in agreement. 

The silence that fell between them was awkward. Sana wondered if Isak talked to Jonas about girls. Well, he’d said they did, didn’t he? Maybe — “Let me know — you can let me know if you like someone. I won’t be weird about it,” she told Isak bluntly which was the only way she really knew how to say things, shaking off her discomfort, or trying to. 

“Same,” Isak echoed. “If you like a guy. I’m here. I can do girl talk.” He waggled his eyebrows up at her. “Just don’t tell Jonas.”

Sana smiled at him, but it wasn’t with a sense of relief. She didn’t really know what she was feeling. She didn’t have a crush on anyone. She didn’t. Probably. She just thought that Fahim was cute. Sometimes. When he smiled. It wasn’t a crush or anything. She didn’t want to — kiss him.

The idea of kissing anyone was daunting and the idea of kissing someone who she didn’t love just made her feel like she would already be letting Allah down. She’d only just started wearing her hijab, in the middle of last year. 

She had this fear, this dream, this nightmare, where she was running or jumping or skateboarding and she would be with crowds and crowds of people that were just crowds of different Isaks and Jonases. And she was running, sometimes, or shooting baskets or just standing but she’d turn around and her hijab would be on the ground. And she’d sweep her hands up through her hair and it would be gone and when she turned to look back at the ground, the Jonases and Isaks would be tossing it back and forth between each other and laughing and she’d beg for it back but they’d never listen. 

So when Jonas would ask her if she wanted to go skating with him and Isak, which he did unfailingly, she would subconsciously reach up and touch her hijab and politely decline. 

And look. Sana knew it was a dream. She knew it wouldn’t fall. She knew it was fastened in tightly. She knew. 

But she still wouldn’t — couldn't — let herself go skating with Isak and Jonas. 

Just like now, when, with Isak looking at her half fearful half expecting, she turned and said, “I don’t have a crush on anyone.”

“Cool,” Isak said. He held out his hand for a fist bump. It was something he’d picked up from Jonas. 

Sana fist bumped him. “Crushes are lame.”

“They’re for losers,” Isak agreed. “Like Jonas. Can you believe he can’t hang out on Friday? He has to spend the entire evening with a  _ girl _ .” 

“Isak,” Sana told him, “I don’t know if anyone’s informed you but. I am a girl. You, too, are spending your Friday night with a girl.”

“Yeah,” Isak flushed, flustered, “but you’re different. You’re -” he gesticulated around in the air with hands aimlessly. 

“Am I not like other girls?” Sana asked him dryly. “Is it the hijab? Does it give me away?”

“You know what I mean,” Isak mumbled. 

Sana squinted at him intently and tilted her head. “Do I?” She asked, almost against her will. This time, the silence was heavy with anticipation as Sana waited for Isak’s response. 

“You’re my friend,” Isak said at last. “It’s just different.”

And Sana didn’t know what to say to that, because he was right and because he said she was his friend.  

It would be over a year before they talked about crushes again. 

 

 

… 

 

 

When Isak started hanging out with Jonas, not much changed. Sana liked Jonas, for the most part. But he was too easy going for her. It worried her. Isak had something inside him that was like her. Something hard. Absolutes. Jonas didn’t. Or, Sana couldn’t see them. 

She wondered if there was anything Jonas wouldn’t do, just to avoid conflict. 

She would find out his absolutes and his edges and his lines later. But when she met him, and for a long time after, she couldn’t see them. 

Hanging out with Jonas didn’t change things in and of itself but Jonas had other friends. Ones that he made easy as breathing and maybe that’s why Sana didn’t trust him. She wasn’t sure she understood him. She liked him, though. He was good people, she thought. His friends weren’t always good people, but he was. 

It wasn’t when Isak started hanging out with Jonas that things changed but when Jonas started hanging out with Eva. 

Hanging out with Eva meant that Isak lied to her for the first time. It meant her first female friend. It meant everything going grey instead of black and white. 

Hanging out with Eva meant everything changed. Or maybe that was just what turning eleven was like for everyone. 

Or maybe it wasn’t. When Isak turned eleven, he was friends with Jonas and Eva and Ingrid and they were the cool kids. When Sana turned eleven, she started wearing her hijab for the first time. 

So maybe, eleventh birthdays weren’t the same for everybody. Maybe they were just different for Sana. 

 

 

 

 

**Age 15 (high school)**

 

Eva and the girls are going to party. As usual, for a Friday. Sana told them -- Eva, really -- she wanted to study. Eva offered to join but she was biting her lip and Sana knew she wanted to be out with her friends, drinking. She told them to go without her, she’d get more done on her own anyway. 

It wasn’t a lie, Sana reassured herself. She really should study and she really did study better alone. 

But she said no because she didn’t want to go to a party and because basketball season started this Friday and she wanted to be there to really kick the season off well. Without Jamilla, the team was down their best point guard. Sana needed to step up.  She wasn’t really sure why she didn’t just tell Eva that but --

Eva was nice. And Sana didn’t mean nice in the generic, can’t-think-of-a-better-compliment sort of way. No, Eva’s endless capacity for forgiveness was one of her best features and it shown through at the worst of times. It made them better. That’s what Sana meant when she said Eva was nice; she meant Eva was beautiful all over. 

Eva deserved someone to put her first. So Sana felt not entirely sad about her breakup with Jonas. Maybe that would be better for Eva. And she liked these new friends better. She thought they might become her friends too, instead of girls that looked at her sideways and sent mean texts to her behind Eva’s back. She thought maybe these friends would put Eva first. 

Sana walked towards the library as she thought. If she wanted to make it to the basketball game, she’d have to finish up in the next forty, forty-five minutes.  

As she opened the doors, her eyes went automatically to Isak, in the corner. She looked away, not registering his presence at first, then did a double take. He hadn’t noticed her yet. Sana hesitated, then walked over to his table. 

“Hey,” she said. 

Isak looked up. There were bags under his eyes. “Sana?” He asked. 

Sana gave him a half smile. “The one and only,” she responded. 

“What’s up?”

She shrugged. “Eva and the girls are out at some party, but I wanted to study up for the test on Monday. You?”

He smiled sheepishly. “Same.”

“Cool.” Silence fell. 

“How have you been?”

“Good. You?”

“Pretty good.” The words felt stilted. “The girls -- Eva’s really nice,” Sana said finally. 

Isak looked back down at the book. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said. He sounded sincere. Sana felt a pang of pity. 

“She’s forgiven you, you know.”

Isak nodded once. “I know.”

“Okay.”

Silence fell between them again. 

“I -” “How’s -” they both spoke at the same time. They made eye contact and laughed awkwardly. “You -” they said in unison. Isak silently gestured for Sana to go ahead. 

“I forgot,” she admitted. “Nothing important.”

“Right.”

There was another pause. “What were you going to say?” Sana prompted. 

“Oh, yeah. How are … things? With Ingrid and her friends?”

Sana pulled a face. “Nothing I can’t handle. Cool of Eva to take the heat off of me like that,” she joked. It fell flat. 

“Yeah. Eva’s nice,” he said, echoing her earlier thoughts. 

Sana made noises of agreement. “And Jonas?” She asked. “Things still the same there?”

“Yeah.” 

“Cool, cool. Good.”

They fell silent. 

“You could have told me that you liked Eva,” Sana said, quietly. She pressed her lips together, waiting for Isak to say something. He never did, but Sana thought his eyes looked a little glassy. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she pressed, when he didn’t say anything. 

“I’m sorry,” he told her miserably. “I’m really sorry. It was really messed up.”

“Isak …” Sana trailed off. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Stress. Like usual. No big deal.”

Sana stared imploringly at him. 

“I haven’t been sleeping great,” Isak finally admitted. “No big deal, though.”

Sana nodded, searching for something comforting to say. “It was probably hard being into the same girl as Jonas,” she tried but Isak just sort of flinched. 

“Yeah,” he mumbled. 

Sana took the hint. “I was wondering,” she began, “if you maybe wanted to study with me?”

Isak’s eyes darted up hopefully at her. “I -- don’t you have basketball or something?”

“Not today,” Sana lied. “Season starts next week. And, you know, I’m really worried about this test.”

Isak gave her a confused look. “You’re worried about how you’re going to do?”

“Oh, no,” Sana reassured him. “I’m really worried about how this test is going to destroy what’s left of your self confidence if I’m not here to help you study.”

Isak grinned thoughtlessly for a few seconds before his mouth shrunk back down into a frown. 

“Admit it,” Sana told him, smiling softly back, “you’re hopeless without me.”

Isak just scoffed. 

They sat in the library together until it closed at five-thirty. Sana walked home alone, sun still high in the sky, hours before dinner. It was too late to make basketball practice, but even despite that, Sana couldn’t help but see the whole of life spreading across the sky in front of her, bright and endless. 

As she got closer to her house, she could hear the sounds of Elias and his friends playing: boys laughter, balls tapping against the pavement, the occasional shout or grunt. She leaned against the window of her kitchen, walking them in the yard playing basketball together. 

After five or six minutes, Elias noticed her. “Hey, everybody! It’s Sana!”

“Hey, Sana,” the five boys chorused after Elias. 

Sana waved back at them. 

“You want to join us?” The short one asked. 

“I don’t think you could handle in Mikael,” Elias said. 

Mikael raised an eyebrow. 

“She’s on Jamilla’s team,” Elias said, and two of the other boys let out a low whistle. 

Only the white one still looked confused. “Whose Jamilla?” he asked.  

Mutism turned to him. “A damn fine player whose wasting her talents studying to be a nurse.”

Mikael swatted at him. “Just because you worship basketball doesn’t mean everyone else should.”

“But --” Mutism tried to reply, but was drowned out by Elias tossing the ball to Sana and rest of the boys cheering. 

“Come on,” Yousef said. “Show us what you got, girl.”

Sana bit her lip, considering. “Alright,” she replied. “Just for ten minutes. Then I have to go skype Jamilla.”

The boys hooted again and the air was once again filled with the grunts and bounces of a basketball game. 

That night, after getting off the Skype call with Jamilla, Sana’s mouse hovered over Isak’s name. Eventually, she just closed the app. It was late. She could just see him the next day in school. 

 

 

 

 

**Age 12 (seventh grade)**

 

The start of seventh grade, Jonas bounded up to them with a new girl in tow, bouncing around in a way that was strangely familiar. “Hey, guys!” He’d said cheerfully while Isak avoided his eyes. “This is Eva. She’s new.”

Eva’s hair was the first thing Sana noticed about her. It was long and thick and beautiful and it tumbled unencumbered all down her back and sides in messy ringlets, not even tied back with a ponytail or ribbon. 

Sana was stuck with a strange idea that maybe she wanted to touch it. She ignored that thought, smiled, and introduced herself. Eva’s eyes went first to the hijab, then to her face, then opened in recognition, then back to Jonas, a light flush dusting her cheeks. 

“Eva moved here last year,” Jonas was saying, when Sana figured out what it was that was so familiar about his manner. He reminded her of Isak, all those years ago, introducing her to Jonas: that same puppy-like eagerness. 

“You’re Ingrid’s best friend?” Sana asked, because everyone knew who Ingrid was. 

“Yeah,” Eva said. “She’s so nice, you know.” Sana didn’t know. “She totally took me under my wing when. You know, no one else would.”

“Nice of her,” Sana agreed neutrally, even though it was hard. It was hard not wonder if Ingrid took Sana under her wing because she was white and because she wore her hair loose and free and not pinned up under layers of black cloth. She wondered if it made Ingrid feel better when she sneered at Sana in the hall or refused to sit next to her.  

Eva nodded but didn’t say anything else. There was a weird silence in the room. Desperately, Sana wanted it gone, wanted to fix it, but could find nothing kind to say. So she didn’t speak. 

“So,” Jonas broke in, eventually, “who wants to get some food?”

“I’m starving,” Eva immediately agreed. 

“Kebabs?” He asked and there was a round of ascent. Still, Sana didn’t say anything. The four of them set off. There was a place by the school. It wasn’t Halal but that was fine. Sana wasn’t that hungry anyway. She doubted anyone would notice. 

“Are you not hungry?” Eva asked, almost immediately. “Or, do you need some money?”

Sana shook her head. “I’m not really all that hungry.”

“Oh, okay.” Eva went to the window to order but spun around and came back. “Are you sure?”

Sana, this time, smiled at her. “I’m good,” she promised. 

“Cool,” Eva replied, smiling back. “I’m going to go order now.” Once everyone had ordered, they slide into the booth, Sana and Isak on one side, Eva and Jonas on the other. 

Isak frowned at her. “What’s wrong?” he asked. 

“Nothing,” Sana told him. 

“What are you two talking about?” Eva asked. Isak’s eyes narrowed.

“Nothing,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

Eva withdrew a bit. “Okay, sorry.”

Impulsively, Sana spoke up. “It’s no big deal or anything,” she said. “I just can’t really eat food that’s not halal.”

“Oh?” Eva asked. “I, um, don’t know what that means,” she admitted. 

“It’s meat that’s been blessed by a muslim,” Isak answered for her and Sana glared at him. 

“ _ Thanks _ Isak,” she said pointedly. He had the decency to look abashed. 

Eva looked between the two of them, confused. Jonas still hadn’t said anything. “Should we go something where else?” Eva asked. 

“No,” Sana replied, a little shortly. She smiled to make up for it. “It’s fine. You didn’t know.”

“Okay,” Eva said. She began to eat her kebab quickly. Sana felt bad. She realized Eva must be nervous, to be meeting so many new people. 

“How are you liking it here?” She asked and Eva lit back up. Jonas and Isak mostly sat there eating while she made small talk with Eva until it was time to head home. 

Jonas volunteered to walk Eva to her bus stop, which made Eva smile coyly at him. Sana wondered if Eva had some sort of crush on Jonas. She hoped not, for Eva’s sake. Jonas was with Ingrid right now. Eva had to know that, especially if she was friends with Jonas. 

She waited until they were both out of sight to whirl around on Isak. 

“What’s going on with you?” She asked. “Why were you being so weird tonight?”

Isak looked caught off guard. “What?” 

“I’m serious. What’s going on?” She softened her voice and reached out to put an arm on his shoulder. “You barely said a word all afternoon. It was weird.”

Isak shrugged. “Stressed,” he said. 

“About what?”

“School,” Isak replied. 

“Oh.” Sana searched for something else to say. “I could help you study, if you want?” she suggested. 

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

“Maybe on Wednesday, or something?”

“Or Friday,” Isak suggested. “If Jonas is busy with Eva.”

Sana was surprised. She hadn’t expected him to agree. Maybe he was really worried about school. They only had one more year left before high school. Sana herself was pretty nervous. “Should we meet at the library?” She asked. 

“Yeah,” Isak said. “There’s all those kids there now, though.”

“Where do you want to meet then?”

“Dunno,” he replied. “Your house?”

That gave Sana a strange sort of tingling in her chest. Isak hadn’t been over to her house before. He hadn’t really asked and she hadn’t really offered. It might be nice, she thought, to be the ones with friends over instead of Elias. But she wasn’t sure what her dad would think about her bringing over a white, non-muslim boy. Or, really, any boy. Her smile faded a bit. She could ask, she supposed.

“Why don’t we go over to yours instead? I’d have to ask my parents first.”

“Or we could just go to the park,” Isak suggested. Sana tried to hide her disappointment.

“The park is fine,” she told him. 

“It might rain, though,” Isak said and now Sana was getting annoyed. Why couldn’t he just come out and say whatever he wanted from her?

“Then ask your parents,” she told him, trying really hard to keep her voice measured and even. 

“Yeah, okay,” Isak agreed. “I will. You too though.”

“Fine,” Sana agreed rolling her eyes. 

Isak smiled at her and Sana felt something inside her, something hopeful, rise. 

 

 

 

 

 

**Age 10 (fifth grade)**

 

“It’s your turn,” Sana said, shoving  _ The Blind Assassin _ at Isak. 

“No, I did the last chapter.”

Sana thought about it. “You’re right.” Isak started to smirk at her. “This one singular time you just happened to be right and -” but Isak’s smirk just kept getting bigger and bigger and eventually Sana huffed and continued. “Alright, forget it, forget I said anything, you’ve never been right ever.”

“I’m always right.”

“You’ve literally never been right.”

Isak cocked an eyebrow. “Sounds like the lady doth protest too much.”

Sana rolled her eyes. “So,” she said, clearing her throat, “in this part, Laura gets really into religion and also there’s a boy. Or man, or whatever. I think someone has a crush on him? Or something? Or maybe they, you know, with him? I don’t know. Laura stole some paints and there was some stuff with pictures. I don’t know if I like Laura.”

“I don’t know if I like this book,” Isak told her. “Oh, wait, yes I do. I fucking hate it.”

“Isak!” Sana said. “Don’t say that!”

“I won’t swear if you don’t make us read books written for forty year old housewives.”

Sana sighed. “You can dislike it without being a jerk,” Sana said. 

Isak shrugged, unrepentant. “Maybe  _ you _ can.”

“I don’t dislike it,” Sana said. 

Isak squinted his eyes at her. “Isn’t lying like a sin?” he asked. 

“Does it matter if it’s a sin or not?” She responded. “Telling other people lies isn’t the bad part. It’s about being honest with yourself. You can’t have a good relationship with Allah if you keep things that aren’t true in your heart. You know? Lying is bad but when you can’t be honest with yourself, it’s like you can’t be honest with Allah. And it’s not like, hellfire and doom but you can’t build much of a relationship there.” 

“Oh,” Isak said. There was a pause. Sana’s speech about lying had been something Elias told her when he was begging her to keep his plans to go to a party with his friends a secret. She thought it was really smart and liked that it was more important to be honest with yourself than other people but she wasn’t sure what Isak would think. 

“So …” Isak trailed off. “Not like suicide girl after all?”

Sana silently relaxed.

“Not really. She takes things really literally, right? I …” Sana hesitated, self conscious of her next few words while Isak waited. “I guess I understand a bit about that. The parts where she’s always doing charity stuff. That’s really important in Islam. My dad is always doing these things, giving his time and setting aside money and stuff. But the rest of it. She takes it too literally, you know? I don’t see religion like that. It’s not that literal.”

“Sometimes it is,” Isak replied softly. 

“Not for me,” Sana told him. She didn’t want to talk about anymore. “And besides,” she said, “Laura’s a Catholic, okay? It’s different.”

“How?” Isak asked. 

“Because it is,” Sana replied, though she didn’t quite know how. 

“I don’t understand the differences,” he said. “I don’t think I really believe in God, though. So maybe that’s why.”

“They’re different,” Sana insisted, resolving to pay more attention at the service on Friday. And maybe google Catholicism or something. 

“I believe you,” Isak said laughing a bit. “Besides, you’re nothing like Laura.”

It was Sana’s turn to narrow her eyes. “Are you insulting me?”

“Nah,” Isak reassured her. “I don’t really like Laura. She’s weird.” Sana waited for him to explain and, eventually, with a sigh, gaze fixed firmly downward, fingers tracing a pattern in the carpet, he did. “She’s not very nice. And she only really thinks about herself. Like, she killed herself. And you’re not -- like that.”

“Thanks,” she said. “You’re a really nice person too.”

Isak finally looked up at her and the two of them sat there smiling at each other for a full five seconds before snapping out of it and going back to the book. And maybe, though she’d rather walk through fire naked than admit it, Isak was onto something when he said it sucked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Age 15 (high school)**

 

After they’d spent that Friday studying in the library, Sana had meant to talk to Isak again. But he was always late to class or listening to music and staring at his desk. She’d talk to him on Friday. 

He wasn’t in the library that Friday. Or the next.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Age 13 (eighth grade)**

 

When Jonas started dating Eva, Sana didn’t mind at first. She was happy. She liked Jonas, on a balance. 

Things with Jonas, Sana came to realize, weren’t that bad. They were nice. Jonas was nice. She was surprised at how nice he could be sometimes. Not always, but sometimes he would just look over at her and she would feel seen. No wonder, she thought, Isak liked him so much. 

She’d told Isak as much and he’d told her to shut up, which was something Isak was starting to say a lot. 

But he’d agreed with her, after a pause and said Jonas maybe had his moments. 

She liked Eva more, though, and it was nice being able to talk to a girl. Eva asked her questions. At lot at first. Less now. 

And then Eva started dating Jonas and Sana was happy, even though everyone else was looking at the floor and not looking too happy. 

That’s when she realized that they’d been cheating on Ingrid and a hot flush of shame, the same sort of shame she felt when using a dirty word in front of a teacher on accident, the shame of being wrong and of doing wrong, rose to her cheeks. 

It was, more than anything, that no one had told her. Not even Isak and she was his friend before Jonas. It was being tired of wondering if anything and everything everyone did was because she was muslim, it was being tired of being the odd one out always, it was being so tired she took down her facebook because all she got was threats. 

So this time, it was her who didn’t show up to meet Isak in the library on Friday. 

 

…

 

Isak came looking for her immediately. He found her in the garden. It was where she liked to go when she needed to pray at school, mostly because there were a lot of spiders and flowers and the other kids were too scared of the spiders or too embarrassed over the flowers to bother her. It was where she went when she wanted to be alone. 

She didn’t know how Isak found her here. She wondered if he’d been looking all over or if he knew she liked to come here.  

“What?” She asked, dully, not making eye contact. 

Isak wet his lips. “I --” he began. “You weren’t in the library.”

She shrugged. 

Isak cleared his throat. “I noticed that you weren’t in the library today,” he repeated in a slightly louder voice. 

“Oh, you noticed that?”

He nodded quickly. Sana didn’t add anything else, moodily snapping twigs beneath her fingers and so he went on. “It was our study date,” he said. 

“I forgot,” Sana said in a monotone, reaching for another twig. “My bad. I’ll remember next week.”

“Okay,” Isak allowed, “but --” Sana snapped the twig. Isak’s gaze followed her fingers. “But I was thinking that maybe we could just do it in the garden?” he offered. 

“Sure.” Sana tossed the broken pieces of the twig away. 

“If you want to,” he added. 

Sana jabbed her hand viciously at yet another twig. “Sure,” she repeated. 

“We don’t -”

“I said sure, didn’t I?” Sana snapped. 

Isak remained silent. “Are you mad at me?” he finally asked. 

Sana stopped looking for twigs to snap and moved her legs to face his direction. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She asked. She almost didn’t but. She did. It didn’t come out like she wanted it to. She wanted it to sound all righteous and angry but instead it sounded so quiet and small and wasn’t really all that angry at all.

She’d been sitting here for the last twenty minutes, though waiting and thinking and imagining what her parents would say and not at all expecting Isak to come and look for her. So maybe that’s why it was small. She wasn’t expecting him to be here too. 

_ Don’t assume _ , her mom would have said if she’d been here.  _ Allah would not want to find judgement in your hearts or prayers.  _

She could hear her mother’s voice clearly still. Her father was harder to conjure but she thought he would say something about jealous and examining her own feelings and faults. Her mother would say,  _ listen to what the other person has to say  _ and her father would add,  _ talk it out when you are firm in who you are.  _

So she almost didn’t ask but she did, in the end, because Isak was there to ask and it felt right. They have been friends years now, she thought. And that isn’t nothing. 

“Jonas asked me not to,” Isak said, shamefaced. This time, he was avoiding her eyes, feet playing with loose soil beneath them. 

It was a good answer. Sana believed him. 

“Sana, I’m sorry,” he said next, more to the ground than her. “I didn’t know what to do, really. And it seemed easier to just not … talk about it. I didn’t meant to purposefully not tell you.”

Sana blinked her eyes rapidly. She wasn’t sure if she still felt firm in who she was. But she still felt upset and she still felt right only now it didn’t feel so hard anymore so maybe this feeling was something different. “Thanks,” she told Isak, swallowing twice. It didn’t make the lump go away. 

Then Isak bent down, put his backpack onto the floor and opened it up. “Look,” he said, pulling out two books. “I thought -- instead of studying -- we could have a revival meeting of Sanasol and Isak’s Book Club Extravaganza.” His eyes lifted off the ground, tentatively searching his. 

“Of 1812?” Sana asked meeting his eyes. 

“Of 1812,” he confirmed, starting to smile. 

“What book did you pick?” She asked, slowly returning the smile. “I bet it sucks.”  
“Nah, I’ve got the best taste in books,” Isak said, tossing the book at her. “I think you’ll like this one. _The Life of Pi_.”

Sana flipped it over and -- she was going to like this one. Unfortunately.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Age 11 (sixth grade)**

 

Easily the worst two weeks of sixth grade were the middle two in January when Isak got pneumonia and was out of school for two weeks. It was her first year wearing the hijab and her first year in a new school and Jonas was about as helpful as a meerkat on a carnivorous island. 

It was, if Sana did say so herself, both an apt and biting metaphor. She had time to craft it while watching Jonas and Ingrid spend the last twenty minutes trying to suck the living daylights out of each other’s faces. 

School was more daunting faced alone. Sana had let herself forget that, momentarily, but she was reminded of it in full force. She came home on Friday, drained. 

“Sana?” Elias asked. “Why are you home so early?”

Sana shrugged. 

“Where’s shorty?”

“He has pneumonia.”

Elias pulled a face. “Ew,” he said. “I bet you’ve already said a du’a or seven, huh?” 

She gently tossed the tissue box at his head. “Seriously, Elias?” She demanded. “Don’t be so immature.”

“What?” He scoffed. “One, I’m older than you, so. And two, sick people are gross.”

Sana rolled her eyes. Elias came over to sit by her on the couch. “Did I ever tell you,” he began. 

“About the time you quote saved our friendship unquote?” Sana interrupted, knowing immediately where he was going with that. “Because if that’s what you were going to say, the answer is yes, all the time. Daily, you remind me daily.”

“Good.” Elias grinned. “You remember.”

“How could I forget?” Sana muttered. 

“So, since I’m the greatest brother who ever lived, and who saved your friendship that one time, and who is still sitting here next to you even though your friend has pneumonia, can you do me one tiny little favor? Thanks, sis.”

“No,” Sana said, mostly just to surprise him. Which it did. 

“What?” He asked. 

Sana relented. “What do you want?”

“Promise me you’ll here me out.”

Sana stared at him. “Tell me what it is first,” she insisted. 

“You can say no,” Elias told her, “but you need to promise to hear me out first.” When Sana waited too long to answer, he added, “I’m your older brother, you have to do what I say.”

“Do not,” Sana replied automatically. Elias groaned, realizing his mistake. 

“Please, Sana,” he begged. 

“Fine, what is it?”

“Can you join the mosque basketball team?”

Sana narrowed her eyes at him. It sounded fun. But with Elias, there was usually a catch. He was more trouble than a wagonload of monkeys, which was an expression she’d just learned at school during their Yellow Journalism lesson in history. “Why?”

“You know. Because I love you and I’m looking out for you and I think you’d enjoy it. And ...” he trailed off. 

“And?” Sana prompted, eyebrow raised.  

“Just -- would you do it?”

“Are mom and dad okay with it?” She asked. 

“Probably,” Elias told her. “Just don’t tell them it was my idea.” 

It sounded really, really fun, Sana thought. “I’ll do it,” she agreed and Elias started to get up, “if you tell me why.”

Elias sank back down. He crossed his arms and shook his head. “I’m not telling,” he told her. 

“Elias,” she whined. “Then I’m not helping you,” she shot back. 

Elias pouted. “But you said you would.”

“Yeah?” she replied. “If you tell me why.”

Elias appeared to wrestle with himself for a minute or two and then got up really quickly and marched to his room. “Fine, forget it. I don’t need your help anyway.”

“Elias,” Sana protested, standing up with him, feeling bad. 

He closed the door to his room in response. 

“Fine!” She yelled. “I was going to help you anyway but --”

He stuck his head out. “Really?” he asked. 

Reluctantly, Sana nodded. “But why can’t you just tell me?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” he said, “you’re too young.” Sana  _ scowled _ . “Besides,” he added with a smirk, “you’re my younger sister.”

“Yeah, well, you’re the big baby,” she replied, which wasn’t one of her better come backs. 

 

 

 

 

 

**Age 10 (fifth grade)**

 

“So she wrote the book? And we were supposed to know that? I didn’t get that at all. Did you? Sana?”

“Um -” Sana began.   
Isak interrupted her immediately. “Oh my God you didn’t! Ha!”

“It was just -- the author or the book or whatever  _ said _ it was by Laura Chase! I knew the whole thing with the boy didn’t make sense, ever since the thing with the telegram.”

“Sure you did, Sana. Sure.”

“Isak!” Sana glared at him until he relented which was to say for maybe half a second. 

“Okay, okay, you’re right. If you didn’t see it, we weren’t meant to.”

“Thanks for properly recognizing my brilliance.”

“As I should.”

“Exactly. Peasant.”

“Sana!” Isak protests, laughing. 

Sana flashed him a regal grin and hand wave. “I respond only to Queen, actually.”

 

…

 

“I hated that book. You have the worst choices.” It was something Isak had said so many times before that it came out less like an insult and more like a languid necessity. 

“I didn’t dislike it,” Sana admitted, “but I didn’t really like it either.”

“Thank you!” Isak cried. “Now, can we finally stop reading ‘important books’ and read more books about swords and beating people up?”

“Sometimes,” Sana told Isak, hiding her smile, “you’re such a dude.”

Isak scoffed. 

 

…

 

“There was one bit,” he told her, just before she left, “that I liked. The bit where she’s talking about the curtains being yellow in another universe. And how there’s all of infinity filled with her making different choices with different colored curtains.”

Sana let a slow smile curve it’s way up her face. “Yeah. That was my favorite bit.”

“It didn’t make the book worth it though,” Isak said immediately. 

“Didn’t it?” Sana asked. 

Isak just shrugged and clapped his arm on her shoulders as they left the library. 

 

 

  

 

**Age 16 (second year)**

 

On Monday, two weeks after Sana and Isak had started talking again and three days after Sana promised herself she was going to talk to him, she walked into class to him making out with Sara, turned around and walked right out. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A Brief Comment On Books Mentioned And Maybe Some Islamic Terms**  
>  \- Mostly just du’a which wikipedia has informed me is an islamic prayer for the sick  
> \- The Blind Assassin: a classic Atwood in that it’s a great book with heavy feminist themes, depressing as shit, and with great unique stylistic elements (that you maybe shouldn’t read for the sole purpose of proving a point when you’re ten)  
> \- Tamora Pierce: Baby’s First Literary Lesbian. Um, great writer of female driven fantasy novels for middle school kids, super engaging, just like classic adventure stuff  
> \- Life of Pi: very well known, lol, a movie now, a book Isak thought Sana would like, i think we all know this book so i’m not going to insult anyone’s intelligence here 
> 
> Yo, google’s my bitch and all but absolutely tell me if I’m getting anything horribly wrong in regards to anything. And, as always, comments really do make my day and I love everyone who leaves one <3
> 
> also! i have a beta now! the wonderful! the amazing! [NNTBR for Name Not To Be Revealed](https://tranquilho.tumblr.com/)
> 
> [Me!](http://turtles-whynot.tumblr.com/)


	4. Men Were Deceivers Ever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isak POV, in which Even shows up (finally) and no one can understand that Isak and Sana are just friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kind of a slight change in format -- ie, going to be sticking to a more directly chronological single year viewpoint for the last four chapters

**Age 13 (eighth grade)**

 

The first time Isak felt weird about being friends with a girl was when Jonas told him so. Jonas said, “that’s kind of weird,” and Isak nodded because Jonas was right about most things.

“I guess,” he said, failing to play it cool. “Why would you — why do you say that? It’s not that weird. I mean, is it?”

“It’s kind of weird,” Jonas told him.

“Shut up,” Isak mumbled. “It’s not that weird.”

“Kind of is.”

“Your _face_ is weird.” Jonas face was, actually, in Isak’s opinion, the opposite of weird.

“Oh, real creative, bro. Way to go. Hilarious.”

Isak gently shoved Jonas, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“But seriously,” Jonas said later, “you should ask her out. If you like her?”

“I like her as a friend,” Isak protested. “It’s not like that. Guys and girls can be friends.”

“Sure,” Jonas agreed, not sounding very convinced. “That’s true. But she’s like, you’re best friend.”

Isak felt himself blushing and tried to will himself to stop. “Jealous?” he asked, not sure what he was hoping to hear.

“No!” Jonas scoffed. “Just looking out for my bro.” He threw an arm over Isak’s shoulder. The heat spread from Isak’s cheeks and over his back where Jonas’s arm rested.

Isak couldn’t really bring himself to shake off Jonas’s arm, but he wiggled around to face him, raising an eyebrow. “Then shut the fuck up,” he told Jonas.

Jonas laughed. “Wow, you’re such an adult, using all those four letter words.”

Isak laughed along awkwardly.

“Hey, man, when are you going to get a girlfriend? You’re not entirely hideous. Do you need some,” Jonas wiggled his fingers suggestively at Isak, “Help?”

“Fuck you, man,” Isak said.

“I’ve got mad game, bro,” Jonas replied. “And don’t even roll your eyes here, I’ve gotten two of the hottest girls in our grade.”

“Eh,” Isak said. “I’ve seen better.”

“Where, in your dreams?”

Isak scowled. “No,” he insisted.

“Relax, man,” Jonas told him. “I’m just teasing.”

“I know,” Isak told him, still scowling.

“Anyway, you’re not as bad as that idiot Magnus. He tried to ask Sara out on Valentine’s Day -- that was a brutal rejection.”

Isak winced sympathetically. Everyone had heard about that. “I guess I’m not entirely pathetic.”

“Not entirely pathetic?” Jonas asked, joking. “You’re a god amongst us all, Isak.”

“Shut up!” Isak said, but he was laughing again, slumped back into the couch, _Die Hard 2: Die Harder_ playing quietly in the background.

 

...

 

“Hey, Sana,” Isak said, later that afternoon, on his way to her house. “What’s a ‘four letter word’ mean?”

Sana didn’t respond right away, instead pulling out her phone. “Why?” She asked. “Where’d you hear it?”

“This TV show or something,” Isak mumbled.

“Here.” She tilted the screen towards him. “ _Phrase that refers to any number of "bad" words, often seen in forum posts,”_ she read _. “Can mean shit, fuck, damn, and even other non-four-lettered-words such as ass and bitch. Can also refer to the basic four letter words with suffixes (ie "ed" "ing"). Usually ...”_ she trailed off but Isak could read what the rest of the entry was _. Said by some religious freak or ten year old that will get in trouble if their parents see it._

“Thanks, Sana,” Isak said.

Sana rolled her eyes. “You could’ve just looked it up yourself, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“But you didn’t.”

“But I didn’t,” Isak confirmed. There was a beat. “Maybe I was testing you.”

Sana flashed him a smile at that. They’d been awkward around each other, just slightly, ever since Isak cornered her in the garden with _The Life of Pi_. It’d been a quick read, actually and they’d talked about it last Friday, but they hadn’t really hung out since.

“Me and Jonas were watching _Die Hard 2: Die Harder_ ,” Isak offered impulsively. “Do you want to -- would you want to -- do that? We didn’t get a chance to finish. It’s about men and cars and stuff.”

“I’ve already seen it,” Sana told him and Isak struggled to cover his surprise.

“When?” He eventually managed to get himself together enough to say.

“Yeah,” Sana said, like it was no big deal. But Isak noticed her shoulders tensing and her fingers tightening. “My brother really likes them.”

“Yeah?” He asked. “What about you?”

“Um,” she turned to face him, “I fucking love them?”

Isak grinned easily at her in response. “Then why the fuck are we reading poorly disguised books about cannibalism?”

“For culture, you idiot,” Sana informed him, reaching forward to swat at the back of his head.

Isak snorted, scooting away from Sana. “Culture. Sure.”

“Isak!”

“Sana!” He called back, giggling.

She gave up trying to reach him. “Whatever, just put it in.”

“But you’re already seen it,” he pointed out.

“So?” she said and immediately blushed. “It’s not like we’re watching these for their phenomenal plots.”

Isak felt some sort of strange coldness creep across his skull holding him in place. “What do you mean?”

“For the action sequences,” Sana stuttered out. “They’re … hella … badass.”

“Hella?” He mocked, coldness seeping away. “Are you from California now?”

“Yes,” Sana responded with a straight face. “You got me, I’ve been from California this entire time. Dude.”

“You fucking liar.”

“No, no. It’s one hundred percent true.”

“Oh my God,” he told her, rolling his eyes. “Pull the movie up.”

Sana shifted on the couch with a groan, walking towards where her computer was resting on her desk. She pulled up Netflix. “Do you remember where you and Jonas left off?”

Isak had no idea. He wasn’t even sure they had been watching _Die Hard 2_. Maybe they had been watching the first. Or the third. Were there three? There had to be. Die Hard was one of those movie series that just seemed eternal and endless despite consistent mediocrity. “Maybe ten or twenty minutes in,” he lied. Sana was right, he thought, watching Bruce Willis’s car explode. He didn’t watch the films for their plot.

 

…

 

 

The second person who makes him feel weird about his friendship with Sana is his dad. It’s a week or two after Jonas leaves Isak’s house after their first sleepover.

“It’s nice to see you making friends with the other boys,” his dad said.

Isak shrugged in response.

“Do you still hang out with that Muslim girl?” he asked.

“Sana’s my best friend,” Isak told his dad, determined.

His dad rose an eyebrow. “Your best friend, huh?” He gave a little chuckle. “I see how it is.”

“What?” Isak asked, narrowing his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.” His dad winked at him which only confused Isak further.

“Ugh, whatever. I’ve got to go — do stuff,” Isak said and left the room. It still kind of smelled like Jonas in his room which made him feel happier. It was like Jonas never had to leave, ever. Not if Isak didn’t want him to. Isak liked that. Jonas would be all his forever.

“Isak?” His dad called.

“What?” Isak snapped, pulled away from his thoughts about Jonas.

“Why don’t you invite Sana over for dinner sometime, huh?”

Isak stared at him. “What?” He asked.

“It would be nice to meet her, is all I’m saying,” his dad said.

“Yeah, but it wouldn’t really be nice for her to meet all of you?” Isak replied.

His dad’s face fell. “Isak ...”

Isak felt a twinge of guilt and wanted to take back his words. Instead, he opened his mouth and more things started to tumble out. “Come on, Lea’s a freak and mom’s crazy. We’re the only normal ones.”

His dad frowned. “Don’t drag your sister into this,” was all he said.

“Sorry.” Isak rolled his eyes. “Was there something else you wanted?”

His dad shook his head and let the matter drop. Or so Isak thought.

He brought it up again at breakfast, in front of Lea and everything, who immediately perked up.

“Is she the one with the black thing on her head?”

“It’s called a hijab,” Tarje said. “She’s muslim. You’ve met her?”

Lea rolled her eyes. “Duh,” she said, shoving her eggs around her plate and smashing them against her knife.

“Eat you food, Lea,” Isak said dully.

“Eat your food Lea,” she mocked, but dutifully put a bite of eggs in her mouth.

“When did you meet Sana?” Tarje tried again.

“Dad,” Isak whined. “Drop it. She’s not coming over.”

“The park,” Lea said. “She’s said it’s good that I destroy my barbies.”

“No,” Isak interjected, “she said it wasn’t a huge deal if you accidentally destroyed them because you were really upset.”

“You were upset?” Tarje asked.

Rolling your eyes was a national sport in the Valtersen household, Isak thought, rolling his eyes as hard as he could. “Yeah, last year.”

Lea was sticking her tongue out at Isak. “Why won’t you invite her over?”

“Because.” Isak said.

His dad looked at him disapprovingly. “Isak.”

“Papa,” Isak repeated.

His dad heaved a sigh, but didn’t say anything.

“I’ve got to get going.”

“At least put your plate in the dishwater.”

“I know.”

“And could you walk your sister? Just to the bus stop? I’m not really going to have time this morning.”

“Whatever,” Isak said. “If she’s ready now.”

“I wanna go with you,” Lea said to Tarje. “I don’t like the bus.”

Tarje looked conflicted.

“Why can’t she go with you?” Isak mumbled, knowing response and dreading it. Why couldn’t he just fucking shut the fuck up? “Mama?” he asked.

Tarje looked down, which meant yes. Isak swallowed heavily. He hated when mama was like this. She got so angry, and then she got mean and then she got really, really sad. It scared Isak a lot.

“You could look in after Mama,” Tarje started to suggest, but Isak cut him off immediately.

“No, I’ll take Lea.”

“No!” Lea yelled. “I don’t wanna!”

“You have to! Too bad!” Isak yelled back.

“Isak!” Tarje snapped. “Don’t talk to your sister like that! She’s eight.”

“She acts like she’s five,” he muttered under his breath.

“You know what?” Tarje said. “Lea, you’re coming with me. Isak, just look in and see if Mama wants something to eat before you leave for school, okay?”

“Papa!” Isak protested, but Tarje just turned to Lea.

“Get your stuff and meet me in the car,” he told her. “I’m going to go over a few things with your brother.”

Isak kicked the chair in front of him as hard as he could.

“Isak!”

“What!”

“Control yourself.” Tarje softened his voice. “I know you’re a big teenager now, but I need you to set a better example for your sister. You’re a big boy now. You’re going to need to start taking on some responsibility at home. I can’t do it all, okay?”

Isak felt himself crumbling as he nodded. “I know,” he muttered.

“What?” His dad asked.

“I know,” Isak said louder.

“Look,” his dad paused, hand in the air, struggling for words. “I know things aren’t -- they’re not great right now. But we gotta hang in there, okay? They won’t be like this always.”

“Sure,” Isak said.

“They won’t, Isak.”

Isak looked away. “Lea’s in the car,” he said.

Tarje stood silently across from him in the room, but didn’t say anything else. Isak slumped against the wall as soon as his dad left, breathing deeply. Then he pushed himself off the wall in the direction of his mother’s room.

He tapped gently on the door, hoping she wouldn’t be able to hear.

“Who is it?” was the immediate response.

“It’s me,” Isak said softly.

There was a distant thud. “Go away!”

“Can I open the door?” he asked, biting his lower lip. He didn’t have hours to reason with her today or he’d be late to school.

“No.”

Isak hesitated. “Mama, it’s me, Isak. I’ve got to get to school, but Pappa thought it would be nice if you could eat something?”

“I’m not hungry,” the voice said.

“Maybe I could just leave some cereal by your bed?” he suggested, tensed against the wall. There was a long silence.

“Do what you want.”

“Okay,” Isak said. “I’ll be right back. Please don’t throw anything when I open the door.”

“Did your father say I would do that?” She asked. “Because he’s lying. He’s always lying. Trying to tell me I’m crazy. You can’t listen to your father, honey. He hates us.”

Isak let out a soft quiet sigh. “Yes, mamma.”

“Good boy,” she said.

Isak was twenty minutes late to school. Sana shot him a questioning look but Isak just shook his head.

 

…

 

 

The third person who said anything was Eva, a few weeks after his father started taking Lea to school in the morning. Isak didn’t know why, but it annoyed him. He kept trying to shove it down but it just kept buzzing around his head. He’d spent all last night tossing and turning until finally falling into a restless sleep at four in the morning and woken up late. For the second time that week. Her head was bent when she approached him and she looked kind of unsure. She’d gestured for Isak to come with her. As soon as they were out of sight of their friends and there was no other students around, she turned to him and whispered, “Are you and Sana like, dating?”

“No?” Isak said in a normal voice. “What? Oh, god, no? Where would you even get that idea?”

Eva looked mortified. “Oh, god, sorry. I just thought that you might be? You’re always together.”

“It’s called friendship?” Isak didn’t know why he was so defensive but everyone seemed to be bringing it up all the time now.

“Yeah, but.” Eva struggled to explain herself. “You seemed really close?”

Isak crossed his arms defensively. “She’s been my friend since third grade.”

“I didn’t know that,” Eva said. “Sorry I assumed things.”

Isak waited for a second then mumbled, “it’s okay. No big deal. People are just really annoying about it." He made a face.

“Yeah,” Eva nodded eagerly. “I know what you mean. Like, guys and girls can be friends? Like hello? It’s 2014?”

“Right,” Isak said.

“Do you like anyone else?” Eva asked then looked like she instantly regretted it.

“Not really,” Isak told her.

“Me neither,” Eva agreed quickly.

There was a lingering pause between the two of them.

“So …” Isak said, drawing out the word. “Was there anything else you wanted to say to me, or can we return to Jonas and Sana now?”

Eva blushed red for a second. “No, that’s it. Sorry, again. Totally my bad. I shouldn’t have assumed things. Sorry. Again. Again again. Do you think if I just never stop apologizing we can forget this whole thing?”

Isak smiled a bit at her. “It’d be kind of hard to forget if you kept apologizing,” he pointed out.

“Right. Sorry.” Eva blushed. “I mean -- my bad?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Isak said. What else could he say? “How ‘bout you stop apologizing and we forget this ever happened?”

Eva nodded furiously in agreement and the two walked back out to Jonas and Sana.

Jonas shot Isak a weird look, prominent brows mashing together as his eyes flicked between Isak and Eva. Isak self-consciously stepped sideways away from Eva. “What was that about?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Eva said. Jonas looked imploringly at Isak. ‘Later,’ he mouthed, trying to think up some lie he could tell Jonas. Maybe if he just kept his distance for a week or so, Jonas would forget all about it.

And it worked. Sort of. Isak didn’t go to the skate park with Jonas that week and ignored his text messages beyond the bare minimum and the next week, Jonas didn’t say anything about Eva.

But Isak couldn’t stop thinking about it. He couldn’t stop thinking about Sana and how everyone seemed to see something that he didn’t and he didn’t want to wonder but he couldn’t help wondering if maybe he should be asking her out.

 

…

 

Jonas was meeting up with Elias, his new bestest friend these day, that lunch, so Isak went to find Sana. She was sitting in the corner outside alone, under a shady tree.

“You know there are benches right there?” he asked.

She nodded once. “So?”

“So.” he sat down. “You don’t have to sit on the ground.”

She tilted her head up towards him. “So?”

“Whatever,” Isak huffed.

Sana squinted at him. “Where’s Jonas? The two of you are usually together these days. More than Jonas and that supposed girlfriend of his,” she teased.

“Dunno.”

“Wow, good answer Isak. Really clarified things for me. Love it when you share.”

“What?” He asked. “What do you want me to say? Um, I would love to beg your humblest forgiveness but today having risen on the late end of the morn and dealing with my smallish sister was not at school today at the proper hour and it is a result of these facts that have forced me to acknowledge that I have indeed no idea where my close male friend Jonas might be lurking; additionally I possess neither the motivation nor wherewithal to search further for him have instead chosen to sit with you, my female friend?”

“Yes. I would love it if you answered every single question like that.”

Isak laughed. “Fuck off, no you wouldn’t.”

“It would get exhausting,” she admitted. “But what’s going on with your sister? You were late today?”

Isak groaned. “See!” he exclaimed. “This is why I don’t share things.”

Sana snorted. “You don’t share things because you have the emotional intelligence of a teaspoon.”

“That’s not fair,” Isak replied. “That’s from Harry Potter.”

“The power of friendship compels you Isak. Woooo,” she mimicked a ghost unconvincingly. She added in finger waggles for extra effect. It didn’t help.

“Ugh.” Isak grunted, flinging himself backwards into a lying position on the ground. “It’s just that my sister’s younger so she can do whatever. And stuff.”

Sana wrinkled her nose. “That’s not totally true. I’m the youngest and my parents would never let me do half the stuff they let my brothers do.”

“No, not like that,” Isak protested. “Like if she wants to go to school with dad or whatever.”

“She is eight,” Sana pointed out.

“Yeah, but it’s annoying.”

“You sound like a petulant child.”

“Sana!” Isak protested, choking. “You’re supposed to be on my side!”

She laughed at this. “But you’re always wrong?”

“What? Me? Are you mistaking me for you? Who is the one who is always wrong?”

“That’s a really lame come back, Isak. That’s just copying me.”

“Yeah, well.” He waved his hand in the air. He let the silence gather.

Eventually, Sana move around to lie down next to him, carefully keeping an eye on her food and where all her clothes were going.

“Anyway,” Sana said, when she had settled in. “You want to come for dinner at my house this Saturday? Friday is mosque stuff, but my parents wanted to invite you over for Saturday. Your parents too, if they want to. My brother’s friend are going to be there, so it’s a casual kind of thing.”

“My parents can’t come,” Isak said immediately. “Work stuff.”

“That’s too bad. You can still come, though. If you want to.” She paused, squinting at the sun. “Do you want to?”

“Yeah! I mean, sure, sounds fun. You know?”

“Could be cool,” Sana kept her voice level.

Isak smiled. “Awesome. See you Saturday, then?”

“See you Saturday,” she confirmed.

 

....

 

Isak stood at the door to Sana’s parent’s house awkwardly shifting an old brown circular box of fancy sounding cheese back and forth in his hands. He took a quick breath, then rang the doorbell.

“Coming!” he heard from inside and seconds later, Sana was opening the door. “Sorry,” she said with a smile, “I was helping in the kitchen.”

Sana’s dad, sitting in near the hall, scoffs loudly at that. “Funny,” he said, “I could’ve sworn you were just sitting there eating the leftovers.”

Sana turned to him beaming. “Exactly. Like I said: helping.”

Her dad gives her a soft chuckle.

“Come on,” Sana said to Isak, a little unsure. “I’ll show you my room.”

“Sounds good,” he said, following her.

As they padded down the wooden hallway to Sana’s room, Isak glanced around at the pictures of Sana and her brothers up on the wall.

“How many brother’s do you have again?”

“Just two. My older -- oldest -- brother just got engaged. And. Well. You know Elias. He was supposed to be here tonight.”

“Yeah,” Isak said, “you mentioned that. What happened?”

Sana shrugged. “You just missed him, actually. Him and his friends left just before you got here, to go see a film or something. Or make a film. I don’t know. Films were involved somehow.”

Isak felt a little disappointed. Elias always said hi to him when he picked Sana up after school. As he went to stuff his hands into his pockets, he remembered the cheese box. “Here.” He shoved it towards her.

Surprised, Sana took it. “Cheese?” She asked.

“Whatever. I don’t know.” Isak shrugged and pushed his hands into his pockets uncomfortably. “It’s for you mom.”

Sana’s mouth twisted sideways, but she didn’t say anything.

“Is that -” Isak started.

“You don’t -” Sana said at the same time.

“Is that weird?” Isak asked with a sudden sense of panic. “I mean, you can eat cheese right? I’ve seen you eat it before. And everyone on the internet seemed to think it was a good idea. Cheese or wine. But I couldn’t buy any wine.”

“No,” Sana said aggressively. “Don’t worry about it. Cheese should be fine. We can eat food like normal, regular people.”

“Yeah,” Isak agreed. “Except, no you can’t. Because you can only eat Halaal food.”

“Isak!” Sana snapped. “It’s fine! Okay?”

“Okay.” He held up his hands in surrender. “You can keep the cheese.”

Sana held out her arms impatiently. Isak handed over the cheese. She pushed her door open and set the box down immediately on her dresser.

Isak wandered around her room, not really sure what else to do or say. It was his first time in her room, something that hadn’t really struck him until this moment right now. It was less organized than he thought it would be. He liked the quotes she had and the pictures.

“Nice room,” he commented.

“Thanks,” Sana replied.

A picture stuck above her bed caught his eye and he stepped closer for a better view. “Hey! Is that me?”

“Yes.” Sana sounded embarrassed.

“It’s so cute!” Isak tried to assure her, smiling quickly. “We’re so young!”

Sana nodded, starting to smile with him. “Yeah, Elias took it. Remember?”

Isak thought about it. “How old were we? Eleven?”

“Nine,” Sana said.

“No, no,” Isak argued, “look.” He pointed at the book in the picture. _Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_. We read that during the summer before sixth grade.”

“No,” Sana said.

“What?” Isak asked laughing.

“No,” she repeated, smirking. “I’m always right. It’s reality that’s frequently inaccurate.”

“Oh, don’t you fucking start,” Isak warned. “I get stranger things than you for free with my breakfast cereal.”

“Ha!” she snorted. “You’ll need more heads for that one.”

Isak raised an eyebrow. “Does this mean I win?”

“Can you even really win by quoting Zaphod Breeblebrox?”

“I don’t know. But I know you lose The Game by not being able to think of a better quote.”

“I hate you,” Sana told him.

Isak pouted at her. "Sana," he whined, drawing out the end of her name. 

“Ugh,” she complained, dramatically throwing her head back. “No!”

“You have to,” Isak reminded her.

Sana brought her head back down to glare at him and then clearly enunciated: “Isak is the smartest person ever and reads better than me.”

Isak smiled. “Aw, Sana. Thanks.”

Sana kept glaring at him.

Isak didn’t mind and turned serenely to face her mirror to examine their picture more closely. Isak had his arm around Sana and they were both smiling hard. Sana was squinting into the sun. He couldn’t believe that was almost two years ago.

“So,” Sana began walking around to sit on her bed next to Isak, “what should we do?”

Isak thought that he maybe spent more time sitting on a bed with Sana than most guys did with girls that they weren’t dating. He knew what beds meant. Jonas had already gotten to third base with Eva. Or so he said. Isak hadn’t even kissed a girl yet.

“Actually,” he started, but was interrupted by Sana’s mom calling them to dinner.

 

* * *

 

**Age 11 (sixth grade)**

 

The Game started when they were eleven. They'd just finished the first Hitchhiker's book (Isak's choice). 

"I'm the best book-picker," Isak said. 

"That's not even a word."

"I'm making a word."

Laughing, Sana protested. "You can't do that! That's not how words work!"

"Um, yes?" Isak asked. "Look, I'm deciding right now it's a word. Book-picker. Verb. A person who picks book."

"It's not a word."

"It's a word."

"Give me a dictionary."

"No fucking way," Isak shook his head. 

Sana crossed her arms smugly. "Then it's not a word."

"But, okay, and think about this: if I use it as a word, and you understand it, isn't it a word? Aren't all words just mumbled sounds that we just randomly ascribe meaning to?"

Sana squinted at him. "I know that's wrong. Somehow." She said. "Just give me a minute.

Isak raised an eyebrow. "Have I finally beaten the great Sana Bakkoush?"

Sana scoffed. "If it's not in the dictionary, it's not a word," she stubbornly insisted. "Like, okay," she said, sitting up, eyes flashing. "If you said a word in Spanish that I knew and I understood, it still wouldn't be a Norwegian word, you know?"

Isak paused for a second. "But it's still a word," he pointed out.

"But not a Norwegian one."

"But a word."

"Fine, yes, it's still a word."

"So then book-picker, by that logic, is a word. Even if it isn't a Norwegian one."

"You're wrong," she told him, but couldn't think of another argument. "Besides, the hypothetical Spanish word would be in the dictionary. Someone who didn't know or understand the word could look it up and learn the definition. If it's not accessible, if you need to just know the word based on context, then it's not an actual word. It's just slang or something."

"But slang words are words."

"But they're not proper Norwegian. Just like English expressions aren't Norwegian expressions."

"But they're still words."

Sana took a deep breath. "But think about it, okay, slang words from thousands of years ago are meaningless without cultural context or a dictionary definition."

"So, words are only words if they are understandable in context or searchable in a definition."

"Yes!" Sana said, triumphantly. 

"So then book-picker is a word!"

"Argh!" Sana groaned and threw herself backwards. "No," she mumbled to the floor. When she heard Isak's laughter, she turned back up to face him. "I refuse to live in a world where book-picker is a word," she informed him. 

"Then you're going to have to kill yourself," he replied. 

Sana frowned. "That's kind of harsh."

Isak looked abashed. "Sorry," he said. "It was just a joke."

"Yeah," Sana agreed. "Just like how thinking that book-picker could be an actual word is a joke."

"You just can't admit I'm right." Isak stuck his tongue out at her. 

"I can't admit you're right, because you _aren't right_ ," Sana emphasized. 

"My heart can't take this kind of abuse," Isak told her seriously. "And if you refuse to take it back --"

"I do --"

"Then I have no other re -- recourse -- than to challenge you to a word duel!"

Sana didn't look very impressed with him. "What the hell is that?"

"Um," Isak said, casting around for ideas. "We take turns naming entries in the Guide. If you repeat one or answer too slowly you lose."

This got Sana's attention. "You're on, bitch."

Over the years, the Game evolved into shouting quotes loudly back and forth until one person gave up or paused. Most of their Friday afternoon bookclubs ended in some version of the Game. When they were twelve, they started adding complex handshakes and a opening monologue for the Game which was announced by the previous winner. By the time they were thirteen, all it took was one quote to get the Game going.   

 

* * *

 

**Age 13 (eighth grade)**

 

After dinner, the two of them sat outside together on the porch.

“Nice weather,” Isak said.

“Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?” Sana asked. “In my room, it seemed like you were about to say something. And during dinner, you were kind of quiet.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Isak told her. “I was just kind of nervous.”

“Why?” Sana asked him, an edge to her voice.

It was the night, he thought. The stars and breeze and the almost summer air that prompted him to be so honest. “I get nervous meeting new people.”

“It’s scary,” she replied back and something warm slide down Isak’s throat. He reached out and squeezed Sana’s hand before he could think about it.

“Actually,” he started. He cleared his throat and started again. “Actually, there was something I wanted to ask you.”

“What?”

Isak looked down at their hands and remembered. “Is it weird,” he said eventually, “that we’re friends? Even though you’re a girl?”

Sana looked down too, following his eyeline. “No,” she murmured. “I don’t think it’s weird.”

Isak took a breath. That sounded promising. He thought about what Jonas would say, if Jonas was looking down at their hands intertwined. It was now, he told himself, or never. In the still night, a screen door opened and closed. There was a warm chattered that seemed to rest lightly in the air on their own accord, held up by nothing by the wind.

“Sana,” he began, heart hammering. Suddenly, he knew he didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to date Sana.

“Isak,” Sana said, awkwardly laughing. Isak didn’t think this was going to go over well. Maybe Sana wouldn’t want to talk to him anymore. Why was he doing this?

“It’s really hot,” he said.

“Nah, not really. You’re just a lame white boy.”

“Maybe.”

“Also,” he forced himself to continue. He had to continue. Maybe if he was heartbroken and pathetic, Jonas would lay off. “I was wondering if --”

But just then, the front door swung open and, putting one hand on Isak’s shoulder and one on Sana’s, a lanky boy swung himself between the two of them. “Hey!” he turned to Isak with a blinding smile. “Wanted to check on Sana’s first Saturday Dinner Friend. It’s a very coveted position, I’ll have you know.”

Sana stuck her head around the stranger’s body. “That’s Elias’s friend.”

Elias’s friend stuck out a hand. “I’m Even. Who are you?”  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> books n stuff: life of pi again and hitchhiker's, harry potter quoted, now we're getting movies in the mix so that's fun (sana liking action movies because of elias is such a headcannon of mine)
> 
> I think this chapter is a bit shorter than usual but Sana's chapters / POV are much easier for me to write somehow hahaha 
> 
> but as always, hope you all enjoyed! as always, please let me know what you thought (and thank you to everyone who already has) it makes my day and it makes me a better writer <3


	5. Emails

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're aren't not not talking. Or, fallout.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 thank you everyone who commented it's inspired me so much with this story and makes me genuinely feel so happy and good about myself!

**Age 15 (high school)**

 

_ Isak told Chris’s girlfriend about the kiss _ . Sana stared at Eva. “What?” she asked. 

“It was Isak,” Eva told her. “I went over to his house to confront him -”

“When?” Sana asked, numbly. She couldn’t process this. 

“Last night. But Jonas was there -”

“What?”

Eva shrugged. “I don’t know. But Jonas was there and he told me that Isak’s dad had left his mom and that he was sad right now.” 

“And?” Sana asked. 

Eva looked away. “And I left.”

Sana sat still.  

“Sana?” Eva asked, in a different voice. It was softer and more timid and hearing it already made Sana want to clench her fists and fight someone. 

Sana turned to Eva afraid. “What?”

“Do you -- did Isak tell you --” she stopped there. 

“No,” Sana told her honestly. “I didn’t know.” It should be a good thing that she didn’t know, but for some reasons, it felt damning. 

“Okay.” Eva nodded once. “Good. I mean -- not good. I’m glad you didn’t know,” Eva smiled at her, “because it’s really fucked up.”

“Why’d he -- why’d he do it?”

“He says he’s in love with me.”

Sana choked. 

“Hey!” Eva objected, grinning a bit herself. “It’s not that ridiculous. I am the most beautiful, after all.”

“Isak said he was in love with you?” Sana repeated the words very slowly, trying to find some sort of meaning or sense in them. 

Eva’s grin faded. “So he never said anything to you?” she asked. Sana shook her head. No. He’d never said a word to her. 

“And his dad -- ?” Eva cut herself off before she could finish, looking ashamed. 

“No,” Sana told Eva and felt something like shame curling in her stomach. “He didn’t say anything.” He said he would, she wanted to tell Eva. He said he wouldn’t lie to her anymore. 

“Well, not yet,” Eva pointed out. “It just happened like, last night. Here, check your phone.” She grabbed Sana’s phone. “Can I?”

Sana tensed but nodded. “Go ahead. 9-6-4-2.” Eva punched her passcode in, Sana’s finger’s twitching against her thighs. 

Eva pulled up her messages, flashing the phone screen towards Sana.  _ No new messages. _

Sana grabbed for her phone as soon as she saw the message. “Thanks for trying, Eva.”

“Sana,” Eva protested, but trailed off, unsure how to comfort her.

Sana turned back to smile at her. “Don’t worry, it’s fine.”

“I’m sure he’ll text you later tonight,” Eva said. 

“Look --” Sana broke off her voice tight. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s talk about something else.”

“Okay.” Eva said. “Um. How are things with you?”

Sana shot her a deeply unimpressed look. Eva snorted. “Oh, you know,” she told Eva dryly. “Same old, same old. What about you?”

“The same.”

“The same?”

“Yeah. The same.”

“That’s good.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I dare say it is,” Sana replied back in the poshest voices she could and the two girls broke down into smiles. 

It was nice, talking with Eva was nice, but it didn’t quiet the nausea that was starting to build in Sana’s stomach. She looked back down at her phone unconsciously and when she looked back up, Eva was sitting there following her gaze. 

Eva’s mouth was twisted into something that looked horribly like pity and even a bit like self-loathing. “Sana -”

_ PING _

Both Eva and Sana jumped when Sana’s text alert went off. Sana snatched her phone quickly and glanced at the screen. Just Elias, wanting her to pick up some groceries while he was out. She didn’t know what she was expecting. It’s not like Isak was suddenly going to text her at eleven in the morning on a Saturday. She shouldn’t be disappointed. Besides, she had other friends now too. Just, so did Isak. And that was fine. It was good. You should have multiple friends. 

“Who is it?” Eva’s voice broke the silence and nearly gave Sana her second heart attack in the last thirty seconds. 

“Just my brother.” She didn’t know if her voice was coming out as steady as she hoped. She didn’t think so. But if it wasn’t, Eva was kind enough to ignore it.

“Nice. Isn’t he engaged?”

Sana shook her head. “The other one. Elias. Actually, I’ve got to go, we’re doing a family thing tonight.”

Eva bit her bottom lip. Sana didn’t know if she wanted Eva to let her leave or to make her stay and talk. In the end, Eva didn’t protest and Sana left to go home and sit in her room alone. It was better this way. This was what she wanted. 

However, when she opened the door to her house, ready to blast some music and collapse on her bed and try not to think of assholes named Isak, Elias was sitting there in the living room with all his friends. 

“Ay!” He called out when she entered. “Why no milk, sis?”

Sana stopped cold. “Get your own damn milk, Elias,” she snapped. “It’s not like you’re not just sitting here!”

“Woah,” he replied, immediately looking concerned. “What’s going on?”

“ _ Nothing _ ,” she insisted and stopped up the stairs to her room. She listened as the sounds below her start up again. Once she was in her room, she stopped and looked out the window. It’s almost noon. She walked slowly over to her bathroom and washed her hands and face. 

One, two, three. Switch hands. She pushed up her sleeves and brought the water to her mouth, then nose. 

One two three. Ears. Her skin felt soft beneath her gentle hands. 

Bend. One two three. One two three.  

Sana moved slowly and intentionally, immersing herself into the moment and the washing so much so that she was almost surprised when she got to the prayer of witness. 

Her lips barely moved as she muttered, "Ash-hadu anlaa ilaaha illallahu wahdahuu laa shariikalahu, wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan 'abduhuu wa rasuuluhu."

She paused at the end, before she moved into the Zuhr. She kept her eyes closed, her breathing even, centering herself fully. Then she stepped onto her prayer matt, entering into the first rakat. 

A sense of calm entered Sana as she started reciting the first surah of the Qu’ran. The sounds of Elias and of the house faded. The prayers grounded her in the moment, tied her to the ground where everything was still and stable. They breathed as one, her and the ground. Allah open her up. Guide her. The words had a well worn tread in her mouth and the more Sana recited them, the deeper into her they sank. 

She let the prayer roll through her body. 

Eighteen minutes later, she was done. She carefully stepped over to her desk and sat down. She would, she decided with a sense of finality, of tightening her spine hard against the incoming onslaught, text Isak later and ask him to talk. 

He hurt her, but she cared about him. He’d been her friend since she was eight and for most of that time, he’d been her only friend. When people stumbled, you didn’t keep walking. You stopped and you bent down and you gave them your hand and you used your strength to pull them back up with you. 

_ Isak,  _ she sent, struggling between trying not to drive him away and trying not to ambush him later.  _ Let’s get coffee tomorrow and talk.  _

**Can’t** _.  _ He sent back, a few seconds later. 

_ Why not? _

**family thing. srry.**

_ Isak, I know what happened with Eva. Can you just meet me? _

It took him two or three minutes to respond, but finally, Sana’s phone lit up.

**Tmrrw at 1?**

_ Sounds good. Thanks. _

She closed her phone. She didn’t think he would respond to that. She didn’t know what she’d say if he did. It would probably be better to save the ‘are you in love with Eva’ question for tomorrow, along with the ‘why didn’t you even tell me you liked me and why didn’t you tell me about your dad and why have you still not told me about your dad and why are you at Jonas’s house and not mine’. 

Sana ignored hot prickling of tears at the back of her eyes and went back to her homework. It was stupid. And anyways. She was going to talk to him tomorrow. 

 

…

 

A few hours later, an episode and a half deep into  _ Buffy the Vampire Slayer _ , there was a soft knock on her door. Sana slammed her computer shut. 

“Yes?” She called out. 

“It’s Elias,” her brother replied, pushing her door open and entering. “Can I come in?”

Sana raised an eyebrow. “Why are you even asking? You’re already here, aren’t you?”

Elias shrugged and smirked at her. “It’s called being a gentleman,” he said loftily. “You wouldn’t understand.”

If there was something soft enough and near enough, Sana would’ve thrown it at him. As it was, she settled for scowling playfully at him and crossing her arms. 

Elias leaned up against the door. “But seriously, sis. What’s up?”

Sana’s arms tightened around her automatically before she forced them to relax. “Nothing,” she told him. 

Elias scoffed in clear disbelief. “You came home all, I don’t know, woman scorned and --”

Now it was Sana’s turn to scoff. “All woman scorned, Elias?”

“Nah, come on,” Elias protested, “you know I didn’t mean it like that. You just came home all upset and kind of angry seeming and I wanted to see if you were alright.”

Sana softened at her brother’s words. “I’m fine.”

“Okay,” he allowed, “maybe you’re fine. But can you at least tell me what happened? To satisfy my curiosity? I’m very curious you know.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing,” Sana joked. 

“It’s a great thing,” Elias assured her, “a truly admirable quality.”

“Oh,” Sana said, face twisting up in mock sympathy. “So you haven’t heard, then?”

“Haven’t heard what?” Elias asked. 

“What they’re saying about curiosity.”

Elias was fighting back a smile, delight clear in his voice. “What? What are they saying about curiosity?”

“Oh, you know.” Sana forced herself to shrug casually. “That curiosity  _ killed _ the cat.”

“Oh shit,” Elias said. “That’s not good.”

“No.” Sana shook her head solemnly.

“But, actually,” Elias responded with a barely suppressed grin. “I don’t know if you’ve been made aware, but I’ve been reliably informed that satisfaction brought that poor feline back.”

“I hadn’t heard,” Sana said. 

“Thought not,” Elias shot back.

“So, since you’re obviously not getting any satisfaction here, I guess you better go and find some,” Sana smirked. “You know, so you don’t become a cat murderer? A murderer of cats? A camurderer, if you will.”

“Good point,” Elias told her and turned to leave. Before he stepped out the door her spun around and said, “Oh, Sana! Hey, how’s it going? I was curious about why you were so upset earlier and also if you don’t satisfy my curiosity you’re going to have a bunch of dead cats on your hand. Might make you a bit of a camurderer accomplice. You can get in real trouble for that. So.” He made a what-can-you-do expression on his face. “Guess you have to answer my question.”

Sana rolled her eyes. 

“Ha!” Elias did a victory dance. “I win!”

“It’s really not that impressive.”

“Says the loser.”

Sana just rolled her eyes again, which made Elias let out a bark of laughter. 

He came over to sit on her bed. “So,” he began. “Tell me.”

“It’s …” she trailed off, wrinkling up her nose. “It’s Isak.”

Elias’s eyes narrowed. “What’s he done?”

“He tried to end the relationship of a friend of mine.”

“Do you know why?”

“She said that he said he was in love with her.”

“Okay,” Elias said slowly, “but you don’t sound upset about that?”

Moodily, Sana jerked her shoulders up and down. “I don’t really know everything that happened there. I don’t want to judge, I guess. And it’s Isak,” she said, as if that would make sense. To Elias, though, it looked like it did. 

“Then why are you upset?”

“I’m not,” Sana lied. 

“Sana,” Elias said warningly. 

“It’s not what you think,” she said. “I’m not in love with him or anything. I’m just kind of upset that he didn’t tell me. Like, I don’t mind if he was in love with Eva. But why wouldn’t he tell me?” Sana avoided Elias’s eyes as her fingers fiddled with the bottom of her comforter. “I just don’t understand why he didn’t tell me, I guess. It’s not a big deal. I’m going to talk to him tomorrow.”

“Sometimes, guys are weird about that kind of stuff,” Elias told her. “He’s willing to share now, isn’t he?”

“Yeah …” Sana said doubtfully. She bit back her next words. 

There was silence in the room. Sana still refused to meet her brother’s eyes. 

“Sana,” he asked, quiet and serious, putting his arm on her shoulder, “what’s going on?’

Sana turned to her older brother and felt young. “I’m just worried,” she told him at last. “We -- me and Isak -- don’t talk as much anymore.”

“Do you want to talk more?”

Sana nodded. 

“But you said you’re meeting him tomorrow?”

Sana nodded again. 

“That’s good, then, isn’t it?”

Sana shrugged. 

Elias smiled at her softly. “This one time,” he told her, “when I twelve or thirteen and super duper mature, I had to pick up this young and immature little nine year old child up from school everyday. It was my sister. A real pain in my ass. Now, again, because this is key, I was at the mature and wise age of twelve and  _  - _ ”

“Elias,” Sana interrupted rolling her eyes. “Get to the point.”

“Okay, fine. Take all the fun out of it. Do you remember that time when you were in third or fourth grade and I came to pick you up but you weren’t there so I searched the library until I ran into some poor kid who was so upset he knocked over a bookshelf? And then I helped that ungrateful sod put the entire thing back together again and then you came out of the bathroom crying and said it was Isak?”

“I wasn’t crying,” Sana replied, “but go on.”

“Okay, well, you know what I remember about that? After only a year of friendship with you Sana Bakkoush, the potential loss of that friendship was enough to make Isak Valtersen cry. Because once people get to know you, Sana, there’s no way they would ever want you out of their life.”

“Stop it,” Sana muttered, ducking her head to hide her smile. “You’re so sappy.”

“I mean it,” Elias said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “People are lucky to have you around. And I know Isak. I know he wants to keep you around. And if he doesn’t, I’ll beat him up. He’s like a twig. It’d be easy.”

“Elias!” The warmth in Sana’s chest had spread outwards into her face like a massive balloon expanding inside her, crushing all of her organs together and making it impossible not to smile. 

Elias smiled sincerely back at her. “I’m the only one who's allowed to be mean to you,” he told her. “It’s in the Qu’ran or something. I’m sure.”

Sana laughed. “Loser,” she told him affectionately. 

In response, Elias suddenly leapt forward to wrap Sana into a massive and unrelenting hug. He hugged her until the call to prayer on his phone went off, startling them both. 

  
  


…

 

Sana stood in front of her mirror at ten thirty in the morning. Her face had a strange shape to it. It felt like it belonged to a stranger. It felt like a face she hadn’t woken up to before. She stared for a few minutes, trying to make sense of this new face in the mirror. She put her hand against the glass. It was her hand. It looked like her hand. But she still didn’t see herself in the mirror. 

Carefully, she unrolled an almost empty bottle of black lipstick that Jamilla had given her years ago and refused to let her return. She hadn’t used it since she was thirteen. She put it on today. 

Next, the eyeliner. Makeup was reflexive, at this point. Second nature. She watched herself in the mirror that morning as her face changed. She looked again, closely, when she was completely done. Even though she looked more like herself, she didn’t recognize the face with makeup any more than the face without. 

She glanced at the clock. 12:03. Perfect. 

She turned towards Mecca, prayed the Zuhr, adjusted her hijab one more time and then left to meet Isak. 

He was sitting there waiting when she got to the park, slumped over the bench, hoodie pulled tight over his eyes. 

“Hey,” she called. 

Isak lifted his head and gave her a fake smile and a little wave. 

Sana walked over to him. “You want to sit here or go to the library or come to my house or something?”

Isak shrugged. “Whatever you want,” he told her. 

“We can stay here,” Sana said, fighting to prevent it from coming out like a question. Isak nodded once, sharply. 

He grimaced. “What do you want to know?” he asked. 

“Why didn’t you tell me you lo -- liked -- Eva?” It wasn’t what she meant to ask. 

It might not have been the question she meant to ask, but Isak looked as surprised as her to hear it. 

“Oh,” he said, and his eyes flitted back down to the ground. “Why do you think?” he asked. 

Sana didn’t answer. 

Eventually, Isak gave a frustrated sigh. “Eva’s just, like, your friend. And Jonas’s girlfriend. And it was weird. Okay?”

“You could’ve talked to me about it,” Sana said, not really in control of what she was saying anymore. “I wouldn’t have told anyone.”

“Oh yeah,” Isak replied sarcastically. “Because you reacted so well when you found out about Eva and Jonas being secretly in love with each other.”

“That was also because you didn’t tell me,” Sana replied, stung. 

A guilty look seemed to pass over Isak’s face. “Sorry,” he said. 

“Don’t worry about it. Do you want to talk about it now?”

“No,” he told her. 

“You can --”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why not?” Sana snapped, finally. “You seem to have to problem talking about it  _ Jonas _ !”

“I -- that’s different,” Isak started then looked green. “Can you just let it go?” he asked Sana, softly. 

“You really messed up Eva’s life,” Sana said, because it was easier than  _ why don’t you want to be my friend anymore? _

“I know,” Isak replied heavily. “I didn’t mean to,” he told her helplessly, after a moment. “It just sort of happened.”

“Sometimes that’s how it feels when you’re in love. I guess.” she told him. 

Isak let out a humorless chuckle. “Sure,” he said. 

Sana looked down at her right hand. It was the one she’d touched to the mirror earlier that day. It looked the same as it did touching the mirror: unconnected to her, different somehow and through some unmistakeable force. 

She summoned up her courage and opened her mouth to ask Isak why he would just talk to her when -

“Sometimes I just don’t want to talk about things. No offense. It’s just a guy thing, I guess.”

Sana closed her mouth, lips settling into a grimace. “A guy thing? What are you doing right now, Isak?”

His shoulders looked pointy, hunched tightly all the way up to his ears. “Nothing. I’m just talking to my -- you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about your dad?” It’s what she’s wanted to ask the whole time, only now she’s hurt and it’s coming out angry and accusatory instead of soft and sad and his face seems to be crumpling with everything she says but she doesn’t know how to stop saying things or how to stop hurting. 

“I don’t need to tell you everything.” He scuffs the dirk with his shoes. “Besides. I don’t know. I didn’t know how you would be about it. You know. Because of the Muslim thing.” He risked a quick glance at her, looking miserable. At first, Sana couldn’t even speak. 

When she was six, she’d been climbing the big apple tree in their backyard when the branch she was climbing on snapped and she’d plummeted back to the ground. She hadn’t been seriously injured but it had been the last time she’d climbed the apple tree. 

It felt like that now: like she was lying flat on the ground, gasping for breath but unable to find it, fighting back tears, alone.   
When she did speak, her words came out fast and harsh, not passing through her brain. “Oh, okay, cool. So even though you’ve known me since we were seven, you just assumed that I would judge you because your father left because I’m Muslim? And all Muslim’s are unempathetic, judgemental people? Cool. Thanks, Isak. I understand why you don’t tell me things now. Because I’m Muslim.”

Isak was stricken. “No,” he said. “I didn’t mean it like that. Come on, you know I didn’t.”

“I don’t know if I do,” she said. “Maybe if I wasn’t such a Muslim,” she spat, “I would be able to understand how you meant it.”

“I’m sorry,” Isak said and Sana paused. “You’re right. It was a fucked up thing to say.”

“It was,” she said bitterly. “It  _ is _ a fucked up thing to think, too.”

Isak wouldn’t meet her eyes. 

“Really, Isak. Thanks,” she said sarcastically because she couldn’t think anymore. “Thanks for this whole thing. It’s been great.”

She got up off the bench. “Wait, Sana,” Isak scrambled up with her. “Are you leaving?”

“Why should I stay?” she asked and waited. 

Isak never said anything. So Sana left. 

  
  
  


**Age 13**

 

She didn’t cry until she got the seventeenth message.  _ How many of your cousins are suicide bombers?  _

It wasn’t worse than the others. It wasn’t the last one, either, because ten seconds later her phone buzzed again and then again and then again and then again and then again. Sana flinched, desperately trying to catch her breath, rocking back and forth. 

_ Buzz _ . 

It was fine, it was fine.  _ Buzz _ . They were all just assholes.  _ Buzz.  _ She didn’t deserve this.  _ Buzz.  _ She was better than them.  _ Buzz.  _ She would get through this.  _ Buzz.  _

She would get through this.  _ Buzz.  _

Maybe she wouldn’t. 

_ Buzz _ . 

_ Buzz _ . 

_ Buzz _ . 

Maybe she should change schools. 

_ Buzz.  _

It probably wouldn’t change anything.  _ Buzz _ . Nothing would ever change.  _ Buzz _ . It would always be like this.  _ Buzz _ . It would --  _ Buzz _ \-- she couldn’t --  _ Buzz _ \-- she would --  _ Buzz _ \-- try --  _ Buzz _ \-- she --  _ Buzz _ \-- she wouldn’t get through this. 

_ Buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz  _

Shaking, Sana reached for her phone. It kept lighting up. She didn’t want to touch it. She glanced at the screen.  _ Ur a ugly terrorist, when r u going back to Iran??.  _

Sana turned her phone off completely then threw it as far away from her as she could. It was quiet. Except for the sounds of her hitched breaths and sobs. She curled around herself, wishing -- not really wishing for anything in particular, just wishing. 

In ten seconds, she told herself, struggling to take deep breaths, I’m going to stop. 

One. _She couldn’t do this_. 

Two. _They were bad people_. 

Three. _Not her_. 

Four. _She couldn’t tell anyone_.

Five. _She couldn’t let them know that she cared_. 

Six. _Why did she care_?

Seven. _Why were they so mean_? 

Eight. _Why_?

Nine. _Everyone hated her_. 

Ten. _She couldn’t do this_. 

One. _She couldn’t do this_. 

Two. _She couldn’t do this_. 

Three. _She couldn’t_.

Four. _It was too hard_. 

Five. _Mosque in twenty minutes_. 

Six. _She was going to be late_. 

Seven. _No. People cared about her_. 

Eight. _Isak was her best friend_.

Nine. _Jamilla was counting on her for basketball_. 

Ten. _She could do this_. 

Sana staggered to her feet. She could do this, she repeated to herself, the words bouncing around her skull. She could do this. Her breathing was still ragged but it was calming down. She was calming herself down into shaky breaths and quiet tears. She wiped at her eyes uselessly. 

As she was changing into her sports clothes, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. Her nose was red and her eyes were puffy and her cheeks still had tear marks on them. Sana went into the bathroom to splash water on her face and pretend like it helped. 

She pulled her hijab tight around her face hoping that it would hide enough and left the house. 

Jamilla was waiting for her when she got to the mosque. “Are you alright?” was the first thing she said when she saw Sana which made Sana’s cheeks burn. 

“Just allergies, or something,” Sana told her. “It’s nothing really.”

Something Sana couldn’t read flashed in Jamilla’s expression before her face shut down.  “Right,” Jamilla said. “Come with me.”

Sana followed her without thinking about it. “Where are we going?”

“The bathroom,” Jamilla responded, without explaining anything else. 

“Um,” Sana said. “Why?”

“I’m going to help you out,” Jamilla replied and Sana got the hint. She stopped asking questions. 

When they got to the bathroom, Jamilla pushed in first. “Hello?” She called. There was no response. “Perfect,” she told Sana. “No one’s here.”

Sana couldn’t help herself. She rose her eyebrow. “And what would you have done if someone was here?” she asked. 

Jamilla smirked at her. “Asked them politely to leave. Obviously.”

“Right,” Sana repeated. “Obviously.”

Jamilla’s smirk soften into a smile and she placed her hands on Sana’s shoulder to guide her to the mirror. “Here,” she said. “Stand here.” 

She put her purse on the sink and rummaged around in it. A few seconds later, there were several clicking sounds as Jamilla pour a handful of black tubes and containers onto the table. “Emergency make up,” she explained to Sana briskly and without hesitating. “If you don’t want people to ask about your allergies.” 

Sana smiled gratefully at Jamilla. 

“Now,” Jamilla said, “the first thing you gotta remember is: fuck the haters. So we’re going to pick out the most badass color here and put it on your lips.”

She rolled open the tube closest to her. It was a deep red. “What do you think?”

Sana, without really knowing why, shook her head. 

Jamilla didn’t press, but simply opened up the next tube. “Okay, here. What do you think?”

This one was a lighter pink. “No,” Sana said.

“Second to last one,” Jamilla warned her, and opened up a thick maroon colored lipstick. 

Sana pursed her lips. “What’s the last one?” She asked. 

Jamilla unrolled it. It was black. 

“That one,” Sana said, pointing at it. 

Jamilla nodded at her approvingly. “Good choice. Now, stand still and press your lips together when I tell you to.” Sana listened carefully to Jamilla speak letting her voice roll over her skin. Listening to Jamilla talk felt a little bit like performing the Wudu, Sana thought. It was cool water brushing lightly against her skin, washing over it and taking the impurities of the day away with it. 

“Now,” Jamilla was saying, “we’re going to still with some dark blue eyeshadow now, because it’s going to go great with the black and because blue is a really good color on you, okay?”

Sana nodded dumbly. “Blue?” she asked. 

“Yeah,” Jamilla told her warmly. “Dark color really compliment your eyes. You look great Sana.”

Something caught in Sana’s throat and she couldn’t speak. She just nodded. 

“Careful,” Jamilla warned her. “You want to stay still here when I’m working with your eyes.”

Sana cleared her throat. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Sana closed her eyes and went back to listening and breathing and letting Jamilla put her makeup on. It seemed like no time had passed before Jamilla was removing her hands and packing up her things. “There.”

Sana looked at her reflection in the mirror. She almost wanted to take a step back. And then, her lips curved up. 

“Jamilla,” she said as sincerely as she could. “Thank you.”

Jamilla winked at her. “Why don’t you keep the black lipstick and blue eyeshadow for now? I don’t really use them too much and you can give them back when you buy some for yourself.”

Again, Sana didn’t know how to respond. “I couldn’t,” she stumbled through saying. “Thanks, but I don’t --”

“I insist,” Jamilla cut her off. “And you can’t argue, because we’re going to be late if we don’t leave soon.”

Sana could’ve hugged her. She wanted to. She didn’t, because Jamilla was already being so nice and she didn’t want to seem even needier than she already did and besides, Jamilla had already done enough, Sana shouldn’t want more. 

“Okay. And I  _ will _ pay you back,” Sana promised. “As soon as I can. I’ll give these back and everything. And I’ll buy you more. You can trust me.”

“I know,” Jamilla told her, smiling. “Now, come on.”

  
  
  
  


**Age 15 (high school)**

 

The next time Sana saw Isak after that day in the park, he was sitting with Jonas and a new boy whose name she didn’t know and looking off into the corner. She was sitting with the others girls, Eva’s new friends. They seemed nice. So far. It was nice to have someone to sit next to. 

Still, sometimes it felt like she was sitting just outside the window watching them talk instead of sitting in there with them and talking with them. Like now. She was watching Isak watch the wall as the other girls rambled on about William and the Penetrators. 

Isak turned to Jonas to laugh then looked away almost immediately. Sana listened to Eva and Noora plan their first party back.

Sana wondered if she should text Isak. She’d been thinking about it, last night. He’d been her friend for so long. It had always been an unspoken thing, between them. She felt weird trying to reach out now. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to.

And now, looking across the cafeteria at Isak, she thought of the mirror again. She saw a stranger wearing the skin of someone she once knew. Who are we when we are not ourselves?

She put her phone away. She could text him later. She looked up from her phone only to realize that Eva was right in the middle of a sentence.

“... party tonight …” Eva was saying. 

“What?” Sana asked. 

Vilde scrunched up her face. “With the Penetrators? Like you suggested?”

Sana made a face at Vilde. 

“Children,” Noora interrupted before Vilde could retaliate. “Should we do a pre-game?”

“My mom’s having a wine tasting,” Vilde said immediately. “We wouldn’t be able to drink any alcohol and we’d have to be really quiet so it wouldn’t be a good idea at all.”

Sana didn’t say anything. 

“I don’t drink, so …” Noora trailed off. 

There was silence around the table for a second until Eva spoke up. “I think we could do it at mine. My mom’s not home.”

Vilde broke out into a relieved smile. “Thanks, Eva. That’s so great of you.” She looked expectantly around the table at the other girls. “So, it’s agreed? Eva’s for the pre-game?”

There were murmurs and nods of assent from around the table. 

“Great!” Vilde told them all again. “This is going to be super fun you guys!”

Eva exchanged a private sort of smile and laugh with Noora at that. Sana was glad to see Eva smiling again, even if it was with Noora and not her. 

“Okay,” Vilde began, saying something else about boys and busses to Chris, but Sana tuned her out quickly. Instead, she looked across the table to Noora and Eva but the two of them were whispering to each other and getting up. 

“We’re going to the bathroom,” Eva giggled. Noora nodded seriously behind Eva, but no one was fooled. 

“Okay!” Vilde told them, smile pasted on. As soon as they left, she turned to Chris and said, “they’re clearly doing something without us. You know, we’re supposed to be on a bus together --” and Vilde and Chris were back on the subject of busses. Personally, Sana thought Vilde was jealous. 

Because maybe Eva and Noora were destined to be the bestest of best friends but Eva’d had other friends who liked her just as much as Noora and maybe weren’t as pretty or as interesting but had known her longer and been there for her throughout the entire nonsense with Jonas and okay, fine, maybe Vilde wasn’t the only one feeling jealous. Still, it made her wish she and Isak were still talking. 

He’d say something petty and then she could say something wise and she’d get to indulge in her anger without being cruel herself. 

Whatever. 

Sana pulled out her phone. No texts. She thumbed through instagram and a few of her photos but got bored quickly. She tapped on Candy Crush and then closed it after about five seconds. Annoyed, she looked back up at Chris and Vilde, Vilde’s mouth still moving and making all sorts of unnecessary words come out of it. She turned back to her phone. 

Oh! She could check her emails. She rarely got emails that weren’t junk emails on her personally email, but maybe there would be something interesting. 

She pulled up  [ thegreatbakkoush@gmail.com ](mailto:thegreatbakkoush@gmail.com) .  

**1 Unread Email** . She raised an eyebrow and tapped her inbox. From:  [ valterseeeen@gmail.com ](mailto:valterseeeen@gmail.com) .  

Sana stared at her phone screen. She blinked, but the email didn’t go away. Isak emailed her? She checked the time stamp. It had been sent seven days ago. Seven? Did he expect her to respond? 

“Sana?” Sana jerked her head up. Everyone was looking at her expectantly. “What do you think about Friday?”

“Um, yeah, sounds good.”

“No,” Vilde said, “do you think we meet after school or at Eva’s later in the evening?”

Sana shook her head and raised an eyebrow. “Okay?”

“And?” Vilde asked. “What do you want to do?”

“Let’s meet after school,” Sana decided. Everyone seemed to agree. Sana looked back at her phone, turned it off and got up. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom. Don’t wait up.”

Chris let out a brief bark like laugh but everyone else just looked a little lost. Sana left. The second she was in the locked stall, sitting on the toilet, she pulled out her phone and opened the email.

_ Sanasol,  _ it starts and Sana is already feeling hot and uncomfortable and boxed in by the bathroom walls.  _ I know I should’ve sent you a text. Or something. This seemed easier though. Sorry if it’s weird.  _

Sana closed her eyes and sank back against the wall, nerves built up to a thundering stomp in her stomach. She forced her eyes back open and down at the phone. 

_ Things with Eva and Jonas got really fucked up. And it was my fault. I let it be fucked up. And I took it out on you. I’m really sorry. I don’t think that stuff, about you and being Muslim. I wanted to tell you things. I just didn’t, because my dad never wanted people to know so I didn’t tell anyone. Jonas only found out by accident.    _

_ We’re reading Surfacing by Margret Atwood in Marlon’s English class, did you know that? Hahaha. Made me think of you. _

_ I’m sorry, again. You probably won’t get this soon, but. Just wanted to make sure you knew that I regretted what I did. Things got kind of fucked with me. I hope you’re doing well, though. _

 

_ Isak _

 

_ sorry.  _

 

It was short. She could clearly see Isak writing it, in her mind’s eye. Spending a day writing and rewriting and deleting it. And, before she could do anything about it, a hot wet tear splashed down her face. Sana sat as still and silently as she could in the bathroom stall, letting the tears just slip down her face, reading and rereading and rereading Isak’s email and imaging him writing and rewriting and rewriting the words. 

And then the bell rang. Sana jolted backwards so badly she smashed her back into the toilet flusher behind her. 

“What the fuck?” She heard a girl’s voice saying. “Is someone in here with us?”

“Whatever,” Another voice replied as the door creaked open, “let’s just get out of …” their voices faded with their footsteps. When Sana couldn’t hear anything else, she quickly brought her hands up to furiously wipe at her cheeks and stepped out of the bathroom. 

She checked her face in the mirror. Good. She looked fine. Still, she found herself fumbling around in her purse for an old bottle of dark black lipstick to apply with shaking hands. 

She’d have to be quick. She didn’t want to be late. 

Sana made it to physics just before the second bell rang, but didn’t hear a word of the lecture. Her pencil flew across the page as she scribbled ideas and thoughts about what to write Isak instead of notes. 

Finally, school ended. Sana gobbled up her papers and shoved them as deep into her bag as she possibly could. They were useless. 

At home, she couldn’t even focus on her prayers, performing the rakats over and over again by rote which only made her feel worse. She pushed her food around her plate, not in the mood to eat. 

“Sana?” her mom asked, midway through dinner, “is something wrong?”

Sana shook her head. “No. Not really.”

“Not really?” Her father raised an eyebrow. “Sana, what’s happening?”

She shrugged. “Just some school stress.”

“School stress?” He father replied. “You haven’t said anything about any tests recently. But whatever it is, I’m sure you’re going to do fine sweetheart. You’re the smartest Bakkoush here.”

“Hey!” Elias objected from the other side of the table. “I’m right here!”

“Like I said,” her dad repeated. “You’re the smartest Bakkoush here.”

Sana grinned while Elias fake glared at their dad. “Thanks dad,” she said. “But really. It’s nothing.”

They let it drop after that, which Sana was grateful for. She hadn’t told their parents about Isak and breaking up Jonas and Eva’s relationship and she wasn’t ready to start that conversation. 

Still, after dinner and her evening prayer, Sana couldn’t stop herself from opening her email and rereading Isak’s words yet again.

Her mouse hovered over the reply button. 

 

…

 

_ Isabelle _

 

_ Admit that I was right about  _ The Blind Assassin.  _ I bet it gives you some real literary cred. Where would you be without me? _

 

_ Talk soon _

_ Sana _

 

_ … _

 

The next day, she walked into class, saw Isak full on making out with Sara and immediately felt sick. She didn’t check her inbox for the rest of the week. And when she did, it was empty. 

 

…

  
  
  


**Age 16 (high school)**

 

**sent** : January 16th, 2016

**from** :  [ valterseeeen@gmail.com ](mailto:valterseeeen@gmail.com)

**to** :  [ thegreatbakkoush@gmail.com ](mailto:thegreatbakkoush@gmail.com)

 

_ Sana _

 

_ Never, I’ll never admit that. U know why? I will never have to. Even u hated it. I could see it in ur eyes. They begged to be saved from that prison of a book.  _

 

_ Isak _

 

_ … _

**sent** : January 23rd, 2016

**from** :  [ valterseeeen@gmail.com ](mailto:valterseeeen@gmail.com)

**to** :  [ thegreatbakkoush@gmail.com ](mailto:thegreatbakkoush@gmail.com)

 

_ Sana _

 

_ Why don’t we meet up in the library one Friday? I can be right about books, you can be wrong about them. It’ll be just like old times. _

 

_ Isak _

 

_ … _

 

**sent** : January 26th, 2016

**from** :  [ valterseeeen@gmail.com ](mailto:valterseeeen@gmail.com)

**to** :  [ thegreatbakkoush@gmail.com ](mailto:thegreatbakkoush@gmail.com)

 

_ Sana _

 

_ The other email was a joke, hahaha. Obviously. The book club was lame :P But maybe you want to get coffee sometime?  _

 

_ Isak  _

 

…

**sent** : February 1st, 2016

**from** :  [ valterseeeen@gmail.com ](mailto:valterseeeen@gmail.com)

**to** :  [ thegreatbakkoush@gmail.com ](mailto:thegreatbakkoush@gmail.com)

 

_ Sanaaaaaaaa _

 

_ are u even getting these??? _

 

_ i _

 

_ … _

**sent** : February 14th, 2016

**from** :  [ valterseeeen@gmail.com ](mailto:valterseeeen@gmail.com)

**to** :  [ thegreatbakkoush@gmail.com ](mailto:thegreatbakkoush@gmail.com)

 

_ Sana _

 

_ Um, so Im pretty sure ur ignoring me and i’m pretty sure it’s on me. Sorry. Sara has been rlly mean to you and it was super uncool of me. Im sorry. I talked to this friend that I live with now and he said this email would be a good idea.  _

 

_ Okey. bye. _

_ i _

 

…

  
  


“Sana!” Eva called out cheerfully across the cafeteria the next day, looking around for a chair of some sort. “Mind if I borrow this?” she asked some boy that Sana didn’t recognize in a suit. He shook his head so she swung the chair around to face Sana. “Did you hear?” she asked. 

“What?” Sana replied. 

“Isak dumped Sara!” Eva said gleefully. “Oops! I should probably be less happy about that, right?”  
“Probably,” Sana said, smiling a bit herself.

Clearly, Eva got over her guilt quickly because she leaned forward and whispered, “on Valentine’s Day too.”

That caught Sana’s attention. “Yesterday?”

“Exactly!” Eva said, triumphant. 

“He broke up with her?” Sana asked. 

“Yeah! Crazy, right?”

“Yeah,” Sana agreed, her mind fixating on the email she’d received from him yesterday. She checked her inbox every day. She felt so stupid doing it but she couldn’t really seem to stop. 

He hadn’t sent her anything in over two weeks though and she was beginning to think that he’d decided to stop when out of the blue he had sent her an email on Valentine’s Day. 

“Ingrid says she’s distraught,” Eva was telling her. 

“Cool,” Sana agreed. 

“No,” Eva corrected, frowning. “Unfortunate. Poor girl. Not really Isak’s type,” she said this last bit with a mischievous smile Sana didn’t even want to understand. 

“Yes, yes,” she said, “we get it, he used to be in love with you.” Eva blinked, surprised, at Sana but Sana didn’t give her a chance to respond. “Sara was horrible to you. And me,” she told Eva. “I think we can justify being at least  _ unalarmed _ at the thought of her distress.”

The smile Eva gave Sana after that was blinding. “You’re right.”

Just then, the others arrived. 

“Hey. What are you guys talking about?” Vilde asked. 

“Nothing,” Sana replied, at the same time Eva said, “Isak broke up with Sara.”

For a second no one spoke. And then Noora, looking around, said, “how come there are no chairs?”

“It’s the theater group. They’ve borrowed most of the cafeteria chairs for the piece. They’re practicing tonight but the performance is this Thursday after school, I think?” It was Vilde who answered, looking earnestly around at them. “I was thinking we could go.”

“Nei, Vilde,” Sana said. 

“Yeah, that sounds pretty horrible,” Noora agreed. 

Chris looked between Noora, Sana and Vilde, silent. Finally, Heaving a sigh, Eva got up. “ _ I’ll _ got with you Vilde,” she volunteered. 

“They’re just practicing now,” Noora reminded Eva. “You can sit back down.”

Eva flopped back down. 

“Chris?” Vilde asked, turning to her best friend. 

“Um, yeah.” Chris decided. “Sounds fun.” She smiled at everyone. 

Noora rolled her eyes. “Are we just meant to stand, then?”

“It won’t kill you,” Sana said, a little more sharply than she intended because Eva swung her head over to look at her with concern. 

“Don’t worry, Noora,” Vilde said. “I’ll go ask.”

Five minutes later, Vilde returned slightly red in the face but with three chairs. Everyone took a seat. No one asked how or who Vilde had terrified into giving up their chairs. 

“So,” Eva said to the group this time. “Isak breaking up with Sara.”

“Eva!” Vilde hissed, raising her eyebrows at Eva and gesturing unsubtly at Sana. “That’s inconsiderate to talk about.”

“Why?” Eva asked, nonplussed. “They weren’t dating or anything.”

“But Sana was in love with him,” Vilde responded in a whisper. 

“I can hear you Vilde. You don’t have to whisper,” Sana reminded Vilde because that was the easiest part of Vilde’s statement to focus on. 

Vilde looked at Sana. “I was trying to be sensitive,” she told her. Noora snorted. 

“Vilde,” Sana said very slowly, as if she were talking to a small child or a god, “I am not in love with Isak. Who told you that?”

“You aren’t?” Vilde asked, eyes impossibly wide, scanning the faces of the other group members for any sort of confirmation of what Sana was saying. “But you guys dated?”

“What?” It was Sana’s turn to take in the blank faces of the other girls and the near hysterical face of Eva. “No, we didn’t. We were always just friends.”

“You were friends?” This time it was Chris who asked. 

“Yes,” Sana told her. “I’ve never had romantic feelings for Isak. He was like --” my best friend was what she didn’t say “-- a brother or something.”

“Yeah,” Vilde said, because Vilde wouldn’t know tact if it hit her with a two by four on the way down to the pharmacy, “but you guys don’t talk anymore so I thought that was because of Sara.”

“You guys don’t talk anymore?” Eva asked, traces of mirth fading. “Is it because of me?”

“We still talk,” Sana said. “Sometimes.”

“No, you don’t,” Vilde said, puzzled. 

“Because seriously,” Eva continued over Vilde, “I’ve forgiven him. I don’t want to get in the way of things, I always thought you two were such good friends.”

“It’s not that,” Sana told her, even though it maybe sort of was. “We talk.”

No one seemed to believe her, though. 

“Okay,” Sana gave up. “We don’t talk anymore but it isn’t just because of him breaking up Eva and Jonas.”

“What happened?” Vilde asked and Noora elbowed her. “Ow.”

“We had a fight. Also he’s dating Sara.”

“Sara was pretty mean to -- us,” Eva settled on at the last moment, with a glance at Sana. 

“What a jerk,” Noora said, a little hesitantly. 

“He’s been emailing me,” Sana said instead of responding to Noora’s comment. “He sent me one yesterday. After her broke up with Sara.”

“Did you reply?” Noora asked. 

Sana shook her head. 

“Why not?”

Sana paused. “I’m not really sure what to say,” she said eventually. 

“We can help you,” Chris suggested. Everyone, including Chris, looked surprised by this interjection. 

“See,” Vilde interrupted, “this is what I mean. It really feels like a romantic thing.”

“Shut up, Vilde,” Sana said at the same time Eva said, “it’s really, really not.”

“What do you mean Eva?” Vilde asked. Sana almost snorted at the look of wild panic on Eva’s face. 

“Because I just -- know them so well,” Eva lied badly. “Anyway, let’s get back to the email.”

“Get back to the email? I’m not emailing him,” Sana protested. “And I’m definitely not involving you guys.”

“You’re right,” Noora said, “you’re not involving us, we’re involving ourselves. Now, let’s brainstorm.”

“No!” Sana snapped, already feeling defensive. “I’m not emailing him.”

“Okay,” it was Eva who spoke up, in a gentle voice. “I think you should talk to him,” she told Sana, “but we’re not going to make you.” She looked around at the other girls. “Right guys?”

The girls nodded, albeit reluctantly. 

Lunch, to say the least, passed awkwardly. 

 

…

 

It was late at night and Sana couldn’t sleep. She kept turning over what Eva said at lunch. Maybe she should’ve let them help her. Why couldn’t she just have let them do it? What was wrong with her? 

_ Bzzzz.  _ Her phone went off. Sana let out a sigh of relief. A distraction would be just what she needed. 

It was Jamilla. **Sorry, I know it’s kind of late, but** **are you going to be there for the game tomorrow?**

Sana felt a wave of irritation.  _ Yes,  _ she typed back.

**Sometimes you go out with your friends instead of staying for practice** , Jamilla replied, which made Sana flush dark with humiliation.  **It’s not fair to the other girls if you get to play in the games when you don’t always come to practice.**

_ I said I’d be there _

**Awesome! I’ve really missed seeing you!**

Sana blinked at the message on her phone. That seemed like a tone shift. Was she misreading Jamilla’s earlier message? 

_ Eva’s new friends  _ she typed out then deleted.  _ I’ve just been busy making some new friends,  _ was what she eventually sent.  _ I didn’t realize practices were that important.  _

**I’m glad to hear that!**

**And I just want to be fair with the practices. Hahaha, everyone tells me I take it too seriously, though. Go! Have Fun! Make friends! Be young!**

_ Jamilla, you’re young too _

**We both know I’m an old maid and I won’t hear another words on the subject.**

Sana smiled down at her phone. It quickly turned into a grimace when she saw Jamilla’s next text.  **Speaking off friends, how’s Isak?**

***of**

_ Isak’s fine. Idk. _

**You can tell me, I got your back <3\. Is it *wink wink* boy trouble?**

Sana couldn’t help herself from firing off an immediate  _ Oh God, no.  _

**:,D** Jamilla sent back.  **Sorry, had to ask!**

_ No, it’s just, he  _ _ did some bad things _ _ made some mistakes recently that  _ _ Eva _ _ hurt one of my friends  _ _ and he feels bad.  _ _ He apologized to her and she forgave him but I’m struggling to not be so angry.  _ She looked down at her text and read it over. Then added  _ at him  _ to the end. 

Jamilla took two minutes to respond. When she did, it was with a quote from the Qu’ran. **Those are the people who will have blessings and mercy from their Lord; they are the ones who are guided. (Surat Al-Baqara, 157)**

**Maybe he had a reason for what he did. He sounds like he needs guidance, not rejection. Try not to give into your anger. Allah is Ever-Pardoning and All-Forgiving.**

_ I’ll think about it,  _ Sana replied after an even longer pause. 

An hour or two later, lying in bed and staring at her ceiling unable to sleep, Sana grabbed her phone off her bedside table and began typing out a message. 

When she was done emailing Isak, she sent two more texts. One to Jamilla saying,  _ I think you were right.  _

The other just said,  _ Thanks  _ and was sent to Eva.  

  
  


…

**sent** : February 15th, 2016

**from** :  [ thegreatbakkoush@gmail.com ](mailto:thegreatbakkoush@gmail.com)

**to** :  [ valterseeeen@gmail.com ](mailto:valterseeeen@gmail.com)

 

_ Isabelle _

 

_ Sorry, been really busy, so I haven’t been checking my inbox. But we should totally get a cup of coffee sometime -- especially now that you’re no longer dating Sara and probably have more free time. _

 

_ Are you free this Saturday? We could even bring books. My dad’s been trying to get me to read Beautiful Ruins for the better part of seven weeks. You’d be doing me a favor, really.  _

 

_ Lates, _

_ Sanasol _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Islamic stuff/books used (islamic stuff is all google, books are all books i’ve read, please correct me if i get something wrong)
> 
> \- what’s nine times six y’all? Forty-two. Boom. Life hacked. You’re welcome. #spreadtheturth.   
> \- Wudu: if your not clean ie have eaten, gone to the bathroom, etc in between the last prayer and now, you have to do the wudu which is kind of just centering yourself and cleaning mainly your hands arms feet and face (there’s a lot more to it, but I don’t want to go to deep into).   
> \- Prayer of witness translation: I bear witness that there is no deity other than Allah alone; he is One; He has no partner and I bear witness that Muhammad is his chosen prophet and true messenger.   
> \- Zuhr/Dhuhr: one of the five daily prayers of islam, performed after noon. Sana here is performing it before because she is trying to find some sense of peace and looking for guidance from Allah.   
> \- Rakat/Rak’ah: like a section/round/pose. I kind of watched some How To Pray videos for this from mecca.net but again, like, please tell me if i’m fucking up.   
> \- On why I say Zuhr/Dhuhr and Rakat/Rak’ah: they’re different translations of the same word. So I’m going to stick to one word in the fic but wanted to be totally clear to anyone interested enough to read through these notes.   
> \- Blind Assassin + Surfacing = ur obligatory book mention in the book club fic, both awesome but super intense margret atwood novels. Honestly, expect books mentioned in previous chapters (like the blind assassin) to continue to be mentioned and referenced. 
> 
> for some old timey lingo here, R&R bitches <3 
> 
> [hmu on tumblr w/ questions, comments, critiques, etc](http://turtles-whynot.tumblr.com/)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which There Is Reconciliation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, i'm so sorry this took so long and i'm so grateful to anyone who's still interested in reading this, whose stuck with me. i promise. i will finish this. and i'm so sorry it took nearly a year to get this chapter up. thank you so much for your kind words and enjoy?

**February 17th**

 

There was a book in Eskild’s basement. There was actually seven or eight books in Eskild’s basement but Isak had already read those books. Not that he would ever say that. Especially not to Jonas. He’d probably admit it to Sana, but it would be on accident in some sort of misplaced attempt at a brag. It was like that, a lot, with Sana. 

But anyway, there was one book in Eskild’s basement that Isak hadn’t read.  

Isak hadn’t wanted to read it at first. He had looked at the title and scoffed. But then, sometime in December, he got an email from Sana. And he had finished reading it, had turned over and had flipped the book open. 

_ When I was five years old _ it had started. Isak had stared at the first sentence. He had read it again. Then he had continued. Eskild had come down at some point to tap on his door, but Isak held really really still and didn’t breath and hoped for him to leave. And Eskild had left. Eventually. 

It was a short book. Isak finished it that night. And when he was done, he flipped back to the first page and read it again. 

 

…

 

**Age 15 (high school)**

 

Magnus was a new friend of Jonas’s. Not a new friend like Elias was a new friend, though. Privately, Isak wondered why Jonas stopped hanging out with Elias. He was too afraid to ask. 

It was probably his fault. 

Most things seemed to be, these days. 

He didn’t understand why Eskild was being so nice to him and letting him stay for free in his basement. That was another question Isak was afraid to hear the answer to. So he didn’t ask. Instead, he wondered. Late at night, staring at his ceiling. Not sleeping.

Isak had been finding it harder and harder to sleep. And when it got really bad, itchy eyes past four in the morning for the third night in a row tears leaking desperately craving unconscious absolution, his eyes would drift over to the book in the corner. He knew it like the back of his hand. Better, even, because Isak knew fuck all about the back of his hand. 

Sara, apparently, didn’t sleep either. Or so it seemed. She could keep time for him, hour for hour throughout the night. Isak didn’t know what to do with that information. He didn’t know what to do with the weird sort of pitying understanding that curdled in his stomach every time Sara texted him some shit about the girls because Isak understood that. He understood what it was like to watch everything fall apart because of you and to have to sit there and lie to the world about it. 

He wondered if she managed to lie to herself about it, but then she would text him at two or three in the morning and, also awake, he would realize he already knew the answer. 

Jonas would ask him things in the hall like,  _ how are you doing _ ? which would normally be a very normal question but Jonas would ask it in a very sincere sort of way. The way that said,  _ it’s okay that you’re not okay right now _ but all Isak would hear was  _ I know  _ and  _ you’re going to be okay again soon right? _

Jonas wasn’t one for words, all the time. He tried, though, which Isak felt was the sort of thing he should appreciate but couldn’t. Supposedly, Jonas was his best friend. But the words felt like ash in his mouth, grey on a black and white page. 

Jonas was his best  _ guy _ friend. 

That was true, because it had to be, but it was a fact about some other Isak. Some Isak who still lived with his mom and his dad and who didn’t destroy his friend’s happiness out of -- something dark and ugly in the corner of his mind that Isak didn’t like to think about. 

There was some Isak out there who didn’t look at his friend too long, some Isak out there who didn’t ruin everything around him. There was some Isak out there who was actually in love with Eva or with Sana or with Sara. 

He knew that dating Sara was dumb. He just -- wanted to try and prove that maybe he could be like that other Isak, with the nice family and the nice friends and the nice life. And Sara liked him. And Sara didn’t want anything from him. And Sara said shitty things about Eva and Isak stopped looking at his reflection but it was okay and he was fine and then one day he blew her off and walked around until he found a bar. 

He really hadn’t realized it was a gay bar. Really. 

And then he drank. And he thought about a lot of things. And he thought about the men who kept trying to buy him more drinks and ask him to dance or ask him if he was okay and if he wanted to go home and he thought of Sana and he wondered -- 

“Honey,” it was a new voice, one Isak hadn’t heard yet. He spun around to face the new man, who had short hair. 

“Hey,” Isak told the man in a slurred voice. “M not interested.”

“I think it’s time to cut yourself off,” the voice said, and Isak groaned. 

“No,” he said. “Don’t wanna.”

The man gestured at the barkeep. “What’s your name, kid?”

Isak pursed his lips and squinted sideways at the guy. “Not ‘supposed to talk to strangers,” he told the table aggressively.  

The stranger smiled gently at him. Or Isak thought he did. Things were kind of swaying and there was a strange building up and burning in his stomach. Everything felt light. Isak didn’t know what was going on anymore. “I’m Eskild. Gay baby savior extraordinaire.”

Isak didn’t stop his head from falling forward back onto the table. “I’m Isak. And you should really be minding your own business, y’know, okay? Like …” he trailed off. 

“I know,” Eskild said, heaving a sigh. “I’m just too good sometimes. Too perfect.” He looked at Isak indulgently smiling for a second before he sighed and sunk down into the chair next to him. “You know, my sister had a baby when she was seventeen -- this was last year -- and I took care of the poor thing on my own for a solid five months while she finished high school. My parents weren’t happy about it, but what could they do?” Eskild shrugged. 

“I’m here,” Isak told Eskild, emphatically. “Parents suck,” he added. 

“Parents do suck,” Eskild said agreeably. 

“Why?” Isak asked, naked vulnerability in his voice. Words kept coming out of his mouth and Isak was just sitting in the backseat watching someone else steer him off a cliff. It was a familiar feeling. 

Something horribly understanding crossed Eskild’s face. 

“I don’t know if you’d like my answer,” Eskild told Isak. 

Isak just looked at him. 

Eskild sighed. “Okay,” he said, “like with my parents, they’re not necessarily bad people, they’re just deeply sad. And listen, everyone is out there with their own subjective experiences, right? So we want them to be perfect, right? But they’re just like us and they’ve got their own internal life and everything. And sometimes they’re homophobic dickbags who’ve never really had anyone challenge their worldview and they can’t handle it at first but really they just need time.”

Isak’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“Okay,” Eskild admitted, “maybe that last bit was about me.”

“No, no,” Isak assured him, “I di’n’t understan’ … any of it.”

“Okay!” Eskild said for the fourth time, clapping a hand on Isak’s back. “I think it’s time to get you home.” He stood up. 

Isak shoved his arm off and slouched down further. “No,” he told the table. 

Eskild’s smile faded. “No?” he asked. 

“No,” he repeated. 

“Okay,” Eskild, said, placatingly. 

“No!” Isak screamed. “No!”

“Why not?” Eskild asked. 

Isak buried his face into his arms and just shook his head. Eskild reached out to pat Isak’s shoulder and Isak flinched violently away. 

“Okay,” Eskild said again, seriously. “I won’t make you.”

Isak lifted his head up hopefully. “You won’t?”

“You can spend the night at my apartment. Not,” he added quickly after seeing Isak’s face go bright red, “in a sex sort of way. You’ll be in a different room. And bed.”

“Why?” Isak asked. 

“Why? Um, lots of reasons. Look, you’re a very lovely sort of man-boy-person, but honestly you’re a little younger and lot drunker than I like --”

“No,” Isak interrupted. “Why -- are you letting me stay?”

“Oh.” Eskild blushed a bit. “I’m a great fucking person.”

“Okay,” Isak agreed and Eskild laughed, delighted. 

“Now, let’s go.”

“Okay, great fucking person,” Isak told him and dragged himself out the bathroom door. 

  
  
  
  


**16 (high school), March**

 

Sana was late. Isak was tapping nervously on the counter. He had finished his coffee seven minutes ago and had been waiting since. His bones were taunt and long beneath his skin, thinly spread over a frame too large to hold it. 

He waited and then he looked up and she was there. 

“Would you like to hear a story?” Sana asked Isak, apropos of nothing, taking a seat at his table in the cafe. 

“Yes?” He asked, non-pulsed. 

“I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to come meet you,” she started. “So I left late. Because I didn’t want to come. Because I wasn’t sure. And then I missed the bus. And I was sitting at the bus stop and thinking about how I was going to be late and how you were going to leave and how I was going to blow our last chance when I saw a taxi across the street. 

“He said he could take me to -- here. I got in. We drove eleven or twelve blocks and I was starting to relax when it occurred to me that I didn’t have any cash.  _ You take debit cards _ ? I asked him. He said something that I didn’t hear. Two minutes later and we were here. He didn’t take debit cards. He didn’t take credit cards. He only took cash. It was fine, though. He would just let me off here. He hoped I would have a nice day.

“I walked around the corner to the alley right outside the window and I cried.” This surprised Isak. She didn’t look ashamed. “I just fell down and I couldn’t stop. It was so nice. I couldn’t believe it. It was a moment of human kindness. And then I stopped crying, eventually, and I got up. And I walked around to the front of the store and I saw your face. And I thought maybe you needed to hear a story about kindness today.”

Isak swallowed. 

“I’m going to get a coffee,” she told him. “I’m glad you emailed me.”  
Isak looked down at the table. His throat felt tight and he didn’t know what to do with his hands. When Sana got back, after an awkward amount of time that Isak spent flipping through apps on his phone and not texting his mom back, she pushed a cookie at him. “Here,” she said with a smile. 

“Thanks,” Isak muttered and then without waiting, he bent down and pulled out  _ The Last Unicorn _ . 

He thudded it down on the table. Loudly. Too loudly. The other patrons turned and looked at him.   
He wrinkled his nose and glared at them until they all turned back to what he was doing. 

Isak took the coffee Sana pushed across to him, mumbling a thanks. They didn’t talk about the book. 

They sat in silence for a bit before Sana broke it, unable to take it. “What do you want?” She asked. “I mean, I guess I know what you want, but like, what do you want? Why’d you email me, why --” she forced herself to stop. Isak watched her swallow her words. It was an unfamiliar sight. Isak didn’t make people nervous. He didn’t make people swallow their words. Or, at least, he didn’t use to. 

He slid the book across the table. 

Sana looked at him frankly. It made him squirm. “You’re going to have to talk,” she told him, matter of fact. 

Isak open his mouth. “My dad left,” he said, and then he froze, stunned. “I mean -” he stuttered, but then stopped. “I’ve living in Noora’s basement.”

Sana blinked. 

“Noora doesn’t know.”

Sana starred. She blinked again. And then she snorted. “She doesn’t know? Oh, god, you’re the one who lives there? You?” Her voice rose in pitch and hysteria, a full blown smile starting to overtake her face. 

“Yes?” Isak said, unwilling feeling himself start to smile in return. “But keep your voice down?”

“Isak, what the fuck?” she asked, bluntly. 

And Isak looked at her face, which was smiling still but a little serious none the less and he bit his lip. And then he started to answer. 

“I just -- they -- my mom’s crazy,” he said. 

Sana’s brows knitted together. “She’s crazy. And it’s -- hard. And then my dad left. With my sister. So it was just me and my mom. I couldn’t -- so I left. And now, I live in Noora’s basement.”

“How?” Sana asked, eventually, after Isak had fallen silent for a while, staring into space. 

It almost startled Isak. He thought they didn’t ask each other things. “I thought we didn’t do this,” he told her weakly. Sana’s face softened but her voice was still hard when she spoke. 

“We can talk about the bullshit with Eva last year, if you’d prefer?”

Isak closed his eyes for a second, letting the shame sink easily onto his shoulders, like it always did, like he always did. But when he opened his eyes Sana was still there and her lips were tight and her shoulders were tensed. It was like there had been a breeze that had flown by and brushed away the clouds. For the first time in so long, Isak saw something outside of his own pain. 

“Sana,” he said, leaning forward across the table and maintaining eye contact. “I’m sorry.” He placed his hand gently on hers for only a moment, then withdrew and sunk back into his seat.  

Furiously, Sana blinked her eyes and pulled her hand off the table. Her lips pressed tighter into each other and for a second and only a second, Isak thought it was because she was angry. She sniffed. “Thanks.” It was wobbly. 

That surprised Isak. Sana wasn’t a wobbly person. The shame started to curdle low and deep and inside again but Isak spoke quickly and sharply and said, “you were my best friend. I am sorry.” And it was real in a way he hadn’t quite been recently, like breath fogging up the cold wintery air. In response, something in Sana’s body seemed to breath out as well. 

Once again, the silence stretched over the two of them sitting at the table in the cafe, seeming to hold suspended in it all the history that had ever existed between them and it held for a minute, for two, and then it snapped. The air felt still, and static. Memories seemed to be crawling loose from the crack above them. 

Isak glanced down at the book he brought, then back up at Sana. “I brought a book,” he reminded her and it wasn’t hard to talk at all. “ _ The Last Unicorn _ .” His cheeks started to turn pink as he spoke, but he forced himself to keep his gaze steady. “I read it in Eskild’s basement.”

“Hm?” Sana said, looking up.

“Noora’s roommate. So Noora’s basement, I guess.”

“How’d you meet him?” She asked.

Isak froze. Then, slowly, he forced his arms to relax. Isak wasn’t going to lie to Sana anymore. It wasn’t who he was. “This bar, he found me in this bar. It was a gay bar, but I didn’t know that. He’s gay. Eskild. Like  _ gay _ gay. But anyway. My mom had been really crazy. And I didn’t want to be home anymore. I wanted to be drunk, and everything and, I don’t know. I don’t really know what I was thinking or how I ended up there. I didn’t know it was a gay bar, I swear,” he emphasized to her. 

She shrugged. “So what?” She asked. “Elias and his friends are always going to gay bars.” 

“What?” Isak asked. 

“It’s not that weird to go to a gay bar, Isak. Don’t be a such a homophobe.”

“I -- what?” he asked. 

Sana smiled at him a little harshly. “Is that not what you were expecting?”

“I’m not homophobic,” Isak told her. 

“Then why are you so freaked out about being in a gay bar?”

“I wasn’t!” He argued. 

“You were!” She snapped back. “You said that you ‘didn’t know it was a gay bar’ like seven times at least!”

“I said it once, you exaggerate,” Isak scoffed. 

“Seven,” Sana informed him, with her eye raised. “I counted.”

“Sana!” Isak shouted, exasperated. And, against his will, smiled. “God, I can’t believe I missed a stubborn shithead like you.”

Sana smiled back. “Now, tell me more about this gay book you read with your gay savior.”

Isak yelped and nearly fell off his chair. 

“It’s not a gay book,” he told her. Insisted, really. 

Sana tilted her head to the side. “Then what kind of book is it?”

“You haven’t read it yet,” Isak told her. “We can’t talk about it until you’ve read it.”

“Tell me anyway,” she commanded but Isak just laughed, shaking his head. 

“Then sit here.”

Isak looked at her incredulously and gestured to where he was already sitting. 

“Fine, sit here and do something else while I read this book.”

Isak shook his head gently at her. “Sana, Sana, Sana. There isn’t a cafe in the world that stays open late enough for a slowpoke like you to finish even a child’s picture book, let alone a complex literary work like this.”

“Stupid people like you,” she told Isak absentmindedly, “should not make jokes.” Isak waited a beat for the punchline. She looked up at him from where she was skimming the back of the book and smiled blandly. “That’s it. The punchline is that you’re a stupid person and your jokes aren’t funny.”

“Ha, ha,” Isak told her. 

“Yes, I thought so,” she responded. “Now, be quiet and watch as I finish this book before you finish this week’s bio.”

Isak nodded sharply and gave her a salut. He went to open his bio. “Bet you a coffee you don’t.”

Sana smirked. “You’re on.”

She didn’t finish this book that day, but the two of them did sit in that cafe for nearly two hours, at the cafe table in the corner. The one right by the air conditioner, with the uncomfortable chairs and the wobbly table that wasn’t really possible to do anything on without it constantly moving. 

Every now and then they even looked up and smiled or spoke or complained about the distracting movement and squeakiness of the table. 

Sana left around four, because she had prayer at five and didn’t want to be late, reluctantly handing the half finished book over to Isak, who hadn’t wanted Eskild to know that it was missing. 

After Sana left, Isak slowly put away his biology, packed up his back and started walking home. His feet beat the familiar path, turned down a familiar road, walked up to a familiar house with a familiar door and a familiar mailbox and then kept walking. Isak stopped when he was halfway up the block. He turned around and stared, for a second. He thought about walking up to the door, knocking. 

He thought about seeing his mother. About her looking at him and seeing him and apologizing. And forgiving him. And hugging him. And telling him that she understood why he had to leave but that she was better now and she was going to take care of him and make him dinner every night and lunches for school, just like she used to when he was a kid. Because he would always be her kid, no matter what. 

Isak sniffed furiously, shoved his hands back in his pocket and turned away, following his feet to Eskild’s apartment this time. 

 

...

 

He met Jonas for breakfast. Coffee, really. A cup in the store on the way to school. They stood outside in the cold, huddle under the strange sort of large umbrella, waiting and biding their time. Jonas looked over at him and sort of gestured inward but Isak, not quite knowing what stopped him or started him or why, shook his head. They stood again, outside, breathing heavily and shifting back and forth on their feet, Jonas casting him looks out of the corner of his eyes. 

Jonas didn’t say anything, though. And neither did Isak, for a long while. Eventually, Isak finished his coffee. He walked over to the trash can, threw it away and thought about how beautiful Jonas’s eyes used to look in the early morning frost bitten sunlight. He let himself remember that. And then he shook his head, forced himself to forget again, and walked back over. 

“You ready?”

“Yeah, dude,” Jonas replied and Isak nodded briefly once. 

“Then let’s go.”

Jonas gave him a dorky salute, and Isak bit back a smile and it felt more relaxed than it had in much longer than Isak cared to think about or acknowledge. 

 

…

  
  
  


**16 (high school), one week later**

 

“Buy me the most expensive one,” Isak told Sana, smirking.

“I’ll buy one punch to that ugly mug,” she muttered. 

“What’s that dear?” Isak asked. 

“Nothing darling,” she responded. “Just wondering if you’ve gone and fucked yourself yet today?”

“Now, now, now,” he chided her. Those aren’t very nice words, are they?”

Sana smirked. “I finished your girly boy book.”

Isak rolled his eyes. “Just buy the coffee first, okay? It’s too early for this much abuse.”

Sana got up and returned with the coffee. “Can we talk about your girly book now,” she asked. 

“It’s not a girly book, first,” Isak said. 

“But if it was, that wouldn’t be a bad thing, right?” Sana interrupted, starring purposefully at Isak. 

“No,” he admitted looking down. Then he looked back up with a shit eating grin on his face. “It would be a terrible thing.”

Sana lightly hit his arm. “Shut up,” she told him. “You’re very funny.”

“True,” Isak agreed modestly. “I am hilarious.”

Sana just shook her head. After a second, the two of them opened the book up to read. After that day, they met every Tuesday after school in the Cafe and they read silently. Isak would show up first and look around, nervously, head bobbing side to side, then grab a seat nearest the door. He would wait for Sana to show up, eyes fixed on the door, and then he would get up himself and walk over to the line to wait for a coffee. 

“Oh,” he would say, when she joined him in line. “Cool, you’re here.”

Then they would go -- usually to a different table -- with their drinks and pastries and they would sit quietly together. 

Sana always entered the cafe second, but she usually got there first. She would pull her car up alongside the the curb of the general store across the street and watch. She would watch Isak walk up, looking side to side, and she would watch him sit. And then she would wait. Everytime she would think about it. She would think about not entering. She would think that something was irreparably broken between them. She would think that Isak had only ever lied to her. She would think about how much she didn’t want to admit it hurt. And then, everytime, she would get up and join Isak in line. 

 

…

 

**Two Months Later**

 

Isak, these days, lived in the main house. Apartment. Whatever. He had ascended the thin rope ladder of basement freeloaded to rent paying member of the apartment. Eskild couldn’t be more proud and Isak couldn’t be more overjoyed with himself. Now he could masturbate. That made things easier.   

Now, don’t get him wrong or anything. He was incredibly grateful for Eskild’s generosity but it was ridiculously difficult to masturbate in some else’s basement, especially when you weren’t supposed to be there to begin with. And it had gotten harder when Isak learned that the basement was where Eskild kept his impressive collection of vintage gay porn. 

Not that -- well. 

It had been hard, is all Isak was saying. 

Literally. 

Now he had his own room and his own responsibilities and had met Linn face to face. It was great. A real step up. And just in time, too. Isak doesn’t know what he would’ve done if he had met Even when he’d been living in the basement. Combusted due to overwhelming lust or something equally absurd, he was sure. 

He’d met Even before, obviously. He was one of Sana’s brother’s friend and he was usually hanging somewhere around Sana’s house. But Isak hadn’t talked to him until yesterday, when he’d shown up at Isak’s school. 

Even had come over and ruffled his hair and teased him about being his bro’s sis’s bro and Isak had -- well, there was no way around it. Isak had  _ blushed _ . Then Even had bent down low and conspiratorial and written his phone number on Isak’s hand and made him promise to call. Isak had just texted him a simple ‘hey, it’s Isak’. Even hadn’t replied. 

_ Ding _ . Isak jumped, then reached for his phone. Oh. Just his mom. Isak dropped his phone back the bed. 

He sighed heavily. God, what a stupid thing to send Even. No wonder he hadn’t replied. Isak wouldn’t have replied to himself. Isak should just throw himself face first out a second story window. Second story because he probably wouldn’t die but it would probably break something, which is really what he deserved. 

_ Ding _ . Isak wasn’t going to check. It was probably his mom again. He wasn’t that desperate. In fact, he didn’t care if Even ever texted --

_ Ding _ !  _ Ding _ !

Isak grabbed his phone. 

 

**Brahhhhhh**

**What’s up**

**I’m here**

 

Oh fuck. Jonas. 

 

_ omw.  _

 

Isak shut his computer. He glanced in the mirror on the way out, adjusted his hair. Looked fine. He glanced over his shoulder, around at his room. His coat was hanging off his bed post. He grabbed it, shrugged it on and left, phone deep in his pocket. 

“Hey, dude. It’s been a while,” Jonas greeted him. 

“Uh-huh,” Isak grunted, locking up while Jonas punched him gently in the arm. 

“What’ve you been up to? I feel like I haven’t seen you in a month. Or two. You’re always with Sana these days.”

“Sorry, dude,” Isak told him, wanting to explain. “Reconnecting and all. I’ve been busy.”

Jonas shrugged. “Yeah, no problem man. I get it. We grabbing a kebab or not?”

Isak gave Jonas a half smile. “Sure, let’s do it.” 

The kebab shop was a good mile and a half further from Eskild’s appartment than it was from Jonas’s house. Neither Isak or Jonas realized this until it was much too late. 

“There’s probably one … closer …” Isak trailed off awkwardly, gesturing over his shoulder. 

“Don’t even worry about it. Your fat ass needed the walk.”

“Oh?” Isak asked. “Who are you calling fat?”

Jonas raised his eyebrows and held up his hands in a gesture of innocence. “No one, nothing, I didn’t say anything.”

“That’s what I thought,” Isak told him, snorting. 

Jonas looked at Isak sideways. “You sure you want a kebab?” he asked. “A salad might, you know, help with,” he gestured around his stomach area. 

Isak shoved his best friend. “Fuck you,” he told him. 

“Snappy response,” Jonas said. 

“Shut up,” Isak replied. “Just shut up.”

Jonas just laughed and stepped up to order. He finished up and the guy behind the counter called Isak up. Ding! That’s when Isak felt his phone go off in his pockets. His hands went automatically to his pockets but he forced himself to relax. It probably wasn’t Even. 

“Next!” the guy called again, impatiently. Isak hurried over to him and order his food. 

He sat next to Jonas, listening to Jonas tell him some crazy bullshit about girls with anorexia or whatever, but wasn’t able to focus, his phone burning a hole in his pocket. 

“Hey,” he interrupted. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”

“Sure, bro, no problem.”

Isak went to the bathroom, found a stall, locked it and sat down. He pulled his phone out.  **(1) new message from Even Sana’s Friend** . 

Isak triumphantly gave a restrained fist pump and opened the message. 

 

**Isakkkkkkkkk! What up my man???**

 

_ Kebabs w/ Jonas … u?  _ Isak replied, closing his phone and flushing the toilet. 

He went back outside to where Jonas was waiting for him, feeling his phone going off in his pocket. Maybe Isak should’ve waited. Even clearly waited a while to talk to him. And there was Jonas here. Jonas couldn’t know who he was texting. That would -- that would be bad, Isak knew. 

“You alright there, man?” 

“Yeah,” Isak waved him off. He pointed at his phone. “My mom. You know.”

Jonas’s face wrinkled up in that concerned sort of tapestry that Isak used to think was so unbearably cute. “You know I’m here if you need to talk, right?”

Isak didn’t really have anything to say, so he just nodded. “I just think I should get this,” he told Jonas. 

“Yeah, totally. Go ahead.”

 

**wow someone wants to hang out with your loser ass?**

**Kidding Sana hangs with you, so you must be cool**

**Hey, you going to the party tonight?**

 

Isak smiled a bit before he remembered himself and sat up abruptly. “Um. I should get going pretty soon.”

“Oh. Okay. You are coming to the party tonight, right?”

“First party of the year? I wouldn’t fucking miss it.”

“Alright!” Jonas nodded, then pulled Isak in for a hug. “I mean it. Anything, anytime. I’m here for you dude.”

Isak muttered out some thank you and then nearly skipped away home. Even responded. Even thought he was cool. Even wanted him at Sara’s party tonight. 

 

_ Yeah, duh, who isn’t? _

**Wow, someone’s a little bitch**

**That’s kind of mean to women and female dogs**

**You little horrible person**

_ Are u even capable of insulting som1? _

**Um, yes, i can anything**

_ Could you go fuck urself _

**Oh, baby i’m already doing it ;-)**

 

Isak regretted his text almost instantly. 

 

…

 

**The Next Day**

 

“So.” Sana began. “You and Even at the party last night?”

Isak froze, icy panic clawing at his throat. “W-what?” he stammered out.

Sana gave him a Look. The Look clearly said ‘you are an idiot’. Isak swallowed. After a long pause, Sana spoke. As she did, Isak felt the tension drain out of the room. “You know what I’m talking about. I saw the two of you chatting.”

“Oh, yeah,” Isak agreed. “He seemed cool.”

“He’s --” Sana cut herself off and looked down. “There was some sort of drama,” she said instead. “Him and Elias don’t really talk much right now. At least I don’t think so.”

“Really?” Isak forced himself to act nonchalant. “Do you happen to know what it was about?”

“Not really,” Sana told him. Isak frowned. It didn’t matter. Still --

“How is Elias?”

Sana’s face twisted up into some weird contortion. “Bad. I think. He drinks a lot. He doesn’t come home every night. It worries me. A lot. It fucking terrifies me, actually.”

It’s been a while, Isak thought, since they’ve been able to talk like this. Last week Sana wouldn’t have answered like that. They’d been talking, these last few months, but carefully. Sticking to safe topics and easy answers. But Sana had just told him something real. 

“That’s pretty rough,” he told her, suddenly so unbearably happy, feeling like a balloon was expanding in his chest. He added, “Sometimes, though, people just need to get away.” He wanted to be honest too. It felt important.  

Sana turned towards him sharply and Isak felt a thrill run down his spine. “Do you feel like you need to get away?”

“Sometimes,” was the answer pulled unwilling from Isak’s mouth. He shifted. Shrugged. “I dunno.” He wanted to be honest. He was trying to be honest.   
“Why?”

He shrugged again. His shirt felt tight around his collar. Sana seemed to be waiting for some sort of response. It was fair, Isak reasoned. She was honest. A few years ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated to answer. “I just can’t stand staying in one place. Everything feels, I dunno, fake, I guess. And sometimes I just can’t stand that. So I leave, and things, thoughts are quieter.” 

Isak stopped, surprised at what he had said. It felt good. 

“Why did you really bring me The Last Unicorn?” Sana asked, referring to the book in front of them.

“I thought it was beautiful,” Isak told her. 

“Why?”

“Because the unicorn lost her innocence, and the man lost his love, and though they were sad then, it was good in the end.”

“Why?”

“Nothing is lost, or destroyed forever, just changed. And that’s okay. Good, even.”

“Why?”

“Because change is hard and horrible, sure. But it’s better. And it’s worth it. The most miserable parts of your life have the most potential. And I liked that idea, when I was sitting alone in Eskild’s basement.”

“But why’d you give it to me?”

“It was so full of hope.”

“Why me?”

“I thought you needed some hope. You seemed so sad. And alone. And I missed you. And I thought you needed some hope, like I needed some hope. So I gave you the book.”

Sana stood up and threw her arms around Isak. “Thank you,” she said and Isak didn’t have anything more to say. He let Sana hug him and he hugged her back. He smiled and squeezed. Sana squeezed him back and Isak closed his eyes and let himself relax, for a second. And then it was over and Sana was letting and sitting back down and Isak was trying to keep from smiling to broadly.

“Isak?” Sana asked him softly, after a minute, glancing down at the table as if she was scared. “You know Even has a girlfriend, right?” 

Slowly, Isak’s smile faded and he nodded softly at her. “I know.”

Sana winced. She hadn’t wanted that. They stood staring at each other for a moment. Then Sana smirked. “Also? He hurts you? I’ll kill him.”

Isak’s smile returned. “Thanks, Sana-sol.”

“Anytime, Isabella.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> books: the last unicorn, which is a personal childhood favorite of mine so a fun one to include here and i do also just want to thank everyone who reviewed or commented or anything over the last few months from the bottom of my heart things were so wild and changed so much and honestly every single time i saw a notification it made me feel so happy and comforted and reminded me to fucking finish this chapter already 
> 
> as always, say hi on tumblr at turtles-whynot and have a fucking happy new year everyone


	7. when you live in dreams

**Friday, December 16th, two days earlier**

 

Sana was getting ready in her room while Elias and her parents fought downstairs. She wanted to cover her ears or hide under a pillow but none of that would get rid of the problem or help her brother. But Sana didn’t know what  _ would _ help him. She didn’t even know what was wrong. That was the worst part. 

So she didn’t do anything. She sat in her room and tried to ignored what was going on. Sometimes, in the mornings, she would talk to him quietly when he was hungover and sometimes at night she helped him sneak back into the house. She didn’t like doing these things, even though they felt like a kindness, because she wasn’t sure if the true kindness would be the tough sort of love that forces people to get better instead of enabling them to self destruct; but she did not have it in her to ignore her brother in pain, and so she did the little things and didn’t say anything but watched sadly, helplessly.

She had a party to get to tonight, anyway.

Eva and everyone were expecting her. It was some party that Eva had scored at Chris’s house. Not to different than every other Friday. Honestly, Sana didn’t know why she was even bothering. Nothing better to do, she supposed. 

She made it all the way out the door and borrowed her dad’s car. The party wasn’t too far away. Sana lived in the nice part of town, but Chris lived in the  _ really nice _ part of town.  

She stopped at the door. She stared. She could hear the pounding music and muffled laughter and loud shouts of shots from outside. 

These parties. They were fun -- sometimes. But they always ended with Eva off in the corner making out while Vilde watched her and frowned. Noora didn’t always come, and had stopped altogether since getting with Wilhelm again. 

Maybe that was a bad sign. Maybe they were just really in love. Maybe Noora didn’t want to be bothered with kid stuff. Sana didn’t know. 

She also didn’t know if she really wanted to go to this party and watch people around her ignoring her. Again. 

As she was standing outside the door, she heard -- Isak. Curious, she turned towards his voice, in a little back alley on the side of the house. He was sitting there, talking to -- Even! Elias’s friend! Sana hadn’t seen him around the house in a while. 

Even was talking to Isak and Even was laughing and then Even was putting a hand on Isak’s knee. Even as her eyes widened in shock as Isak blushed a glanced away, Sana knew she had to get out of there. 

She stumbled away from the side alley and walked, quickly, back towards her dad’s car. 

Fuck! Sana took a breath. She rubbed her eyes and blinked into the darkness. It didn’t really help. She rummaged around in her purse, looking for her keys, thinking. That’s probably why Isak hadn’t responded to her texts. Busy with boys.  

That’s when her phone rang, causing Sana to jump possibly a solid foot into the air. She’s just lucky she managed to keep hold of her phone. Cautiously, phone still ringing, she turned her phone over to check the number. 

It was an unknown number. Usually, that meant it was some sort of hate call. Her finger hovered over the decline button. But she was tired and alone and it was a Friday night and she didn’t want to fight, like she did every night. Instead, she pressed accept. 

“Hello,” she said in a monotone, waiting for the vitriol. 

“Hello! Sana? Is that you?” Party music and an anxious voice came through her phone’s speaker instead. “It’s me, Yousef! You’re brother’s friend. Sorry to bother you on a Friday night, I was just wondering -- this is Sana, right?”

“Yes,” Sana said, pulling herself into a more upright sitting position. “It’s Sana. What’s going on?”

“Elias is -- he kind of passed out. We were wondering if you could take him home?”

“Fuck,” Sana cursed. 

“No,” Yousef was quick to reassure her. “He’s absolutely fine! He didn’t even drink that much tonight. I think it’s just exhaustion. You know how --”

“How we hasn’t been sleeping or eating or taking care of himself?”

“Well. Yeah. Clearly you do know. So.” Yousef paused. “Are you coming over?”

“I’m getting the car keys out as we speak,” she promised him, and she was. She jammed the phone in the seat pocket and switched the phone to speaker. “Where are you?” She asked, starting the ignition. 

Yousef told her, and after a few more tries to get the car going, she was on her way. Yousef hadn’t hung up the phone, even though they didn’t need to be on the line that much longer. 

“What’s been -- what has been going?” Sana asked, after a minute. Sort of just testing to see if Yousef was still there. 

“I, um, don’t know if he’d like me to --”

“He’s sitting there passed out!” Sana exclaimed. “He doesn’t get a say anymore!”  
“I know, it’s just, I’m his friend.” Sana didn’t say anything to that. Encouraged, Yousef continued. “And I don’t want to, you know, betray that.”

Sana watched the long, twisting road unfold before her in the night, ignoring the chimes from her phone. Probably Eva or Vilde, wondering where she was. She thought about what Yousef said. 

It was nice. She liked that he didn’t want to betray Elias. Elias had good friends. 

Still. “I’m his sister. Can you just -- give me a general overview? I want to help him.” She debated silently with herself for a few seconds, then added: “like he always helps me.”

Yousef didn’t speak for long enough that Sana began to wonder if he was still there. “A friend of ours tried to kiss another friend, even though he was in a relationship, and then tried to kill himself. And then he blocked us on all social media.”

Sana sucked in a breath. Yousef hadn’t named names, but that had to be why Even didn’t hang around Elias anymore. 

“Even did all that?”

Yousef went silent for even longer.

“Yousef?”

“I don’t -- I can’t tell you anything more.”

He sounded completely torn. “Don’t worry,” Sana said, a rush of compassion and love flooding through her, “I understand.”

There was silence again. 

“Are you almost there?” Yousef asked. 

“A few miles,” Sana said, then double checked google maps. “No, sorry, about twenty-eight minutes away.”

“That’s far,” Yousef said. 

“Yeah. Is he -- is he okay? In spite of everything?”

“I think -- I think he’s getting over it. I don’t know. We’re just trying to, you know, be there for him. He’s a great guy, your brother. I think he’s just been letting everything get to him. He blames himself for some stuff. He’s just -- he’s a great guy,” Yousef repeated, lamely. 

“I know,” Sana said and let it lapse into silence. “You know,” after a beat, “I saw Even, with a friend of mine. He looked -- happy. I --” Sana regretted bringing it up. Did she want to make Yousef feel better about Even? Or did she want to know if she should be warning Isak? 

There was an intake of breath on Yousef’s end. Sana bit her lip in anticipation. 

“Should I -- What should I do?” Sana stumbled over her words, trying to prompt Yousef into answering. She felt lost. Unable to reach Isak or her brother. Or the girls. And the dark, dimly lit road in front of her didn’t seem to offer any answers either. 

She clung to the steering wheel and waited. Listening to the silence. Glad there weren’t any other cars on the road.  

Eventually, he spoke up. “I don’t think you should worry. Even’s a good guy. I think he’s just having, you know, a hard time. He’s still with Sonja. You could reach out to her?” Yousef suggested. 

“I --” Sana paused. She thought about it. “You’re sure he’s still with Sonja?”

“Not … positive, but pretty sure. Why?”

“No, nothing,” Sana reassured him. “Just surprised. It sounded like he cheated on Sonja.”

“It was complicated,” Yousef said, uncomfortably. “Let’s -- can we -- talk about something else?”

Sana let him change the subject, but the concern stayed heavy on her shoulders. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Well, for starters,” Yousef began, voice taking on a teasing lilt, “I know you play basketball with Jamilla. What’s your team?”

Sana was glad he wasn’t in the car with her as she tried desperately to keep down her smile as she began to talk with Yousef in earnest. The basketball conversation served them well but they moved easily from basketball to childhood stories to a shared, secret love of american tv. The twenty-eight minute drive, after that, felt more like seven seconds. And when she got out of her car, she still hadn’t hung up the phone. 

“I’m here,” she said. 

“I see you,” he replied. 

She looked around, catching sight of a grinning Yousef waving at her from inside a small house just left of her. 

“You can hang up now,” she told him. “I got here safe, didn’t I?”

“Nah,” Yousef said, “you’re not in the house yet.”

“Are you seriously going to make me talk to you until I get in the house?” Sana retorted. 

“Yeah,” Yousef said. And fell silent, just looking at her. Waiting. This time, the silence was comfortable and Sana smiled back and walked towards the house. 

She rang the doorbell and watched, through the window, as Yousef got up and got the door. He opened it, standing face to face with her finally. 

Sana bit her lip, not knowing what to say. Yousef didn’t say anything either. 

“So … can I hang up now?” Sana asked and then winced as she heard her voice coming through the speaker’s on Yousef’s phone. He ducked his head. 

“Is it bad if I say no?” Sana rolled her eyes, and took her phone away from her ear, but didn’t hang up. 

“Where’s Elias?”

Yousef put his phone down as well and lead her into the back room. 

In a rush, her conversation with Yousef, seeing Even at the party, everything was shoved directly out of her mind when she saw her brother, slouched over a toilet, flecks of vomit still on his shoes. 

“It’s good that he threw up,” someone was saying, but Sana couldn’t hear them as she made her way to her brother. 

“Elias!” She screamed. 

He nodded at her groggily and Sana felt her heart stop for a moment. She grabbed at Elias and felt hands helping her prop him up. She walked back to the car like that, Yousef helping her prop Elias up, people in the party still laughing and smiling and playing their throbbing music. 

The boys didn’t let go when they reached the threshold of house, either. They held on, carrying Elias to the car, helping Sana load him into the back seat. Sana kissed the top of her brother’s head. Then she got in the driver’s seat. 

“Hey,” a voice interrupted her. 

She looked up. It was Yousef. “Hey.”

“I was wonder,” he said, glancing up and down, nervously, “if you’d like my number. In case of emergencies.”

Sana stared at him. Then, slowly, she pulled out her phone and rose an eyebrow. “As opposed to whoever’s phone number I talked to the entire drive here?”

Then Yousef did something wonderful: he blushed. “Oh, right.”

Sana laughed. “Thanks, foolish boy.”

“You better not put me in your contacts like that!”

Sana only smirked, letting Yousef yell at her as she pulled out. 

“I’m God Boy! No, God  _ Man _ ! Superhero! Savior! Not foolish boy! Anything but that!”

“Fine!” She yelled back. “Foolish Man!” and with that comment, she left him sputtering in her rearview mirror. 

Five minutes into the drive, a noise came from her phone. Surprised, she took it out. It was Yousef. Singing? 

“Are you … singing?” She asked. 

“Oh shit!” He said. “I forgot the phone was still on!”

Sana laughed. “You’re not showing me that you aren’t a foolish boy,” she said and Yousef groaned. 

That night, she fell asleep talking to him. 

 

…

 

When she woke up in the morning, her phone sitting on her pillow complete dead, she had a moment of confusion before the night came rushing back. Oh God. Had she really fallen asleep talking to a boy? Sana thought it was entirely too possible that she actually liked Yousef. In the  _ like _ like sense. She pulled her pillow into her face and simply screamed into it, which, of course, was the exact moment her mom stepped into her room. 

“Let’s just pretend you didn’t see this,” she told her mother, removing her pillow. Her mother just laughed, and reminded her that breakfast was in ten minutes. 

Elias wasn’t at breakfast, so after she’d cleared and washed her plate, Sana stomped upstairs to find him. 

She knocked twice on his door and then just opened it. 

Elias groaned in greeting. 

She walked over and sat on his bed. “How are you doing?”

“Fine, mom.” He rolled his eyes. 

“Do you even remember last night?”

Elias closed his eyes. “Why does it matter?”

“What the fuck do you mean, why does it even matter?”

“I was out with friend, partying. I didn’t realize I’d be getting the police interrogation at nine in the morning.”

“It’s almost noon, asshole, and I ask because I had to come pick you up last night.”

Elias froze. “What?”

“You heard me.”

Slowly, Elias began to sit up, rubbing his head. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “But what happened?”

The more Sana talked, the sicker the look on Elias’s face got, his frown slipping lower and lower. 

“So, brother, that’s why I ask: are you okay?”

For a second, Elias’s bottom lip shook and Sana thought he might cry. Instead, he just began to talk. About how hard things were. About how much everything with Even had fucked them up. About how he didn’t know what to do. About how mom and dad kept waiting for him to do something with his life and he just couldn’t seem to get his head above the water and breath. 

And while he spoke, Sana reached out and held his hand and listened. 

“You’re my favorite brother. You know that, right?”

Elias nodded. 

“When I am sad,” she told him, “you always make it better, okay? You’re a good person, okay? You’re a good person and I love you and it’s going to be okay, okay?”

Elias nodded again. “Okay,” he told her and something was clipped lose in Sana. 

 

**Monday, December 18th, present**

 

Sana practically skipped into school that Monday. Isak, on the other hand, practically did the opposite. “Isak!” She yells, for no other reason than she could. She waved, he glared, she laughed, he smiled unwillingly and headed over. It was a pretty normal back and forth for them. 

“Morning sunshine!” She declared.

Isak snorted at her. “Why the fuck are in you such a good mood?”

Sana hits him. “Why aren’t you? Didn’t you spend all weekend with Even?”

Instantly, Isak’s face shuts down. “What are you talking about?” he hissed, crossing his arms over his chest defensively. Sana, for once in her life, took the hint. 

“On Friday, we talked about Even? And his --”

“I know about his girlfriend, Sana,” Isak said moodily, “though why I would care is a real fucking mystery.”

Sana bit her lip. “Okay, well, if you weren’t with Even this weekend, what did you do?”

“Slept,” Isak told her shortly. 

“Sounds fun.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Someone’s in a good mood today.”

“Sana --” Isak protested. 

She held up her arms. “Hey. I don’t mind. As long as you can tell the difference between a deuterostome and a protostome, you can be the most miserly old fuck in the world.”

Isak paused a beat. “And the difference is -- ?”  
“A protostome, is a lot like you -- develops a mouth before it develops an anus and as a result, is often completely full of shit.”

“Wow,” Isak said, feigning hurt. “This from the queen of bullshit?”

“I’m not --” Sana broke off. Isak didn’t seem quite ready for gay jokes yet. She looked around, spotted Vilde and waved. “Vilde!”

It was a good recovery and cover up, only Sana didn’t really want to talk to or engage with Vilde’s particular brand of neurotic mess today. 

“Sana! I can’t stay and chat, I have this very important meeting, it’s with Bill. You know Bill? He’s my advisor. He doesn’t like people being late. But it’s so lovely to see you! We missed you at the party yesterday! Oh, Isak, you were there! With that weird theater kid, right? Are you joining theater groups? I’m making one, so I’ll facebook you the details later. I wish I could stay and chat but --”

“I understand completely,” Sana assured her. 

“Good. Well, I guess I’ll talk to you at lunch? That is, if you’re there. Last time you were there, but it was only for like, ten minutes and then you left. I hope you’re there! It’s hard to claim a seven person table when there’s only four of us and personally, I’d like to graduate without being hated by the entire school. Not that --”

“It’s fine, Vilde,” Sana reassured her. “I’ll be there.”

“Good!” Vilde smiled widely one last time and left. 

Sana rolled her eyes, turning back to Isak who had that sort of bemused sort of traumatized look new people got after a conversation with Vilde. 

“She’s --” 

Just then, Isak’s phone went off. Then again. Then again. 

“Even?” Sana asked with a raised eyebrow.   
“No,” Isak replied, checking. “Vilde.”

Sana snorted, but before they had the opportunity to talk further, the bell rang. 

 

…

 

Isak felt himself curling up in self-loathing as he slouched away from Sana on his way to another pointless English class. English was his least favorite subject, it really was. When the fuck was he ever going to move to america? 

He and Even were supposed to meet up over the weekend, but Even had never showed or even texted him back. 

Fuck. He probably was straight. I mean, Even  _ had _ kissed him Friday night. That meant something. Or did it? Shit, probably not. It was probably all some game, some joke for Even. Or maybe he just lost his phone and was feeling really bad right now. No. That’s stupid. He just doesn’t like you that way, Isak tried to tell himself, even though the thought seemed to make his heart sink past his toes. 

It was a weird feeling, being with Even. Almost irresistible yet utterly, utterly terrifying. Even made him feel like his whole body had been asleep and it was just now starting to wake up. And the waking up was good but everything tingled and stung and he couldn’t really put weight on his feet and stand quite yet. 

And then when you took that away? 

It felt like being gutted. Isak pulled out his phone, checked his messages again. Nothing from Even. Two from Jonas, wanting to meet after school. Isak rolled his eyes. Jonas had been on this quest lately, to make Isak feel better about himself. Personally, Isak thought that Jonas should just accept that he couldn’t perform miracles and move on. 

Isak couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the day. He didn’t get any more texts except for one more from Jonas saying “Come on man!!” with two exclamation marks. Isak texted back a simple “srry” and ignored the rest of Jonas’s texts. 

Isak spent the bus ride home combing over his past messages with Even, looking for a reason or hope or something. Maybe understanding. He wondered if he should text him again. His last two texts had gone unanswered. This would be a third. Jonas always said to never triple text a girl, so maybe that rule applied to guys? 

God, too bad Jonas wasn’t gay and couldn’t give him advice. Which, Isak reflected a little wryly, was a completely different sort of problem than Isak used to have with Jonas’s sexuality. 

When he got back home, however, Eskild was there. Isak stopped in the doorway to the house and peered, cautiously, inward. “Eskild?” He called, even though he knew the answer. 

Eskild bounded out. “My young child! What is it?”

Isak raised an eyebrow. “ _ You’re _ young  _ child _ ?”

“Yes,” Eskild agreed, unabashed. “You are but a babe, suckling at my naked breast --”

“Okay, okay!” Isak interrupted. “Good god. Can we go a week without me hearing about your breasts -- naked or otherwise?”

“Not possible,” Eskild said and then grinned. “And also not what I’ve been summoned to talk about.”

“You weren’t summoned,” Isak hemmed. 

“Isak!” Eskild interrupted. “You’re stalling. You know how it is when you get pedantic. Now, tell father what’s going on.”

“At least you’re not calling yourself daddy,” Isak replied. 

Without missing a beat Eskild said, “I should throw you over my knee and spank you for that.”

Isak shuddered in horror while Eskild beamed in pride. Slowly, though, Eskild’s features relaxed into something more fond. Isak squirmed under this knew gaze. 

“What?” He asked, defensively. 

Eskild held up his hands in the air. “Nothing.”

“Fine. Can we talk, then?” Isak felt more uncomfortable asking this than he had that time Eskild had offered him a permanent place in the apartment. But he hadn’t slept this weekend and he’d gotten a B on his last bio test and something inside him just wanted to scream, constantly, all the time and he couldn’t keep fucking going. 

“I’ll put on a kettle,” Eskild told him, “and then we’ll talk.” 

He guided Isak over to the living room, after putting the kettle on, and placed a hand gently on Isak’s arm. “What’s going on?”

“I --” Isak looked down. “There’s this guy. Even. He’s -- I don’t know. I thought we had something. But. I guess not.”

Eskild had bit his tongue when Isak said guy, barely containing his glee or desire to coo over Isak’s baby gay guy problems. “Well, if he’s yanking you around, he doesn’t deserve you, you know that, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, he shouldn’t be treating you like that. What is he, all hot one minute and cold the next?”

Isak nodded. 

Eskild pursed his lips. “Let me ask you one more thing. Does he have a girlfriend?”

Isak nodded again, not even bothering to wonder how Eskild knew. You just kind of accepted that he knew things no mortal could comprehend and left it at that. It was easier. 

“Right, yeah,” Eskild told him. “I know this kind of thing. You see it a lot. Guy’s in denial. Confused.” Eskild hesitated. “You like this guy?”

“Yeah.”

“A lot?”

Isak shrugged. 

“They just -- these things don’t usually go well. Guys like that don’t usually leave their girlfriends.”

“Oh,” Isak said. And then he didn’t really say anything else, but he did surreptitiously wipe at his eye. It was just -- itchy. 

“I mean, they do sometimes! Your guy might! He might leave her, he really might! But that’s besides the point!”

“It is?” Isak asked, a little bit of hope starting to enter his voice.

“It is,” Eskild confirmed. “Because the way he’s treating you? Flirting with you while he’s involved? Texting you every day then ignoring you for weeks?” 

“It hasn’t been -- it hasn’t been weeks,” Isak protested. 

“Whatever, darling,” Eskild literally waved his concerns away. “The important thing is: you matter, little baby gay. You deserve to be treated well. And if this guy, this Even, isn’t treating you like you deserve, then he’s not worth it.”

Isak sniffed, a bit, quietly. 

“I’m sure if you asked Jonas or anyone, they’d tell you the same thing.”

“Yeah,” his voice breaking a little bit, “it’s just -- I  _ really _ like him, Eskild.” And Eskild felt his heart break with Isak’s voice because damn --

“First heartbreak. It’s the worst.”

He reached out and put his arm around Isak’s shoulder. Isak tensed up but Eskild just held him tighter and closer and eventually, Isak relaxed against him, just as the shrill wail of the tea kettle started going off. 

They sat there toether, ignoring the shill wail of the tea kettle as long as they could. Then, Eskild got up and poured them both a cup and the two of them sat together drinking tea and flipping through grindr. 

 

…

 

Isak texted Jonas that night before he went to bed, making plans for that weekend. There was a party Friday Jonas wanted to go to. 

“Busy,” Isak told him. “Plans with Sana.”

“She can come too?” Jonas offered. 

“Nah, it’s -- it’s important shit.”

“Cool,” Jonas told him. “I’ll see you Saturday, then?”

“What, and miss and chance to beat your ass at Halo? Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

After talking to Jonas, he texted Sana. Then he emailed her, just to make sure. Friday. After school. No books. Isak took a deep breath and steeled himself.  _ I have something I want to talk to you about _ , he put in the text and in the email. 

 

...

 

**Friday, December 23rd, 2018**

 

They went to Sana’s house. Isak was oddly silent, which made Sana babble. The words Yousef and cute might have been mentioned. Repeatedly. It was unfortunate. 

When they got to her house, they went right into her bedroom. Sana sat on her bed. Isak started pacing. Sana, blessedly, didn’t say anything, waiting on Isak to begin. And, eventually, he did. 

“I’m a -- like guys. I’m a -- I’m like -- I --”  Sana listened patiently, as Isak spoke. 

“It’s okay to not know,” she suggested and immediately regretted it when Isak whipped around to glare at her. “Okay, okay! I’ll stop backseat driving your coming out!”

“Don’t say that!”

“What, backseat driving?”

Isak glared harder. Sana only laughed. “No,” he said, pointedly. “Coming out. I’m not doing that.”

“You  _ literally  _ are.”

“Sana, please, can’t you just let me sit here and be repressed?”

Sana stuck her tongue out. “No. You’re coming out, you’re doing it tomorrow, and no one is going to care because Jonas and Eva still love you after your crush on Eva ruined their --” she lets out a gasp as an expression of delight crosses her face. “You never liked  _ Eva _ , did you?”

Horribly, Isak blushed. He almost wanted to stop her, the familiar dread and sweat sick feeling coming over him. But he couldn’t stop Sana when she got like this. 

“Jonas?” Sana snorted. “ _ Him _ ? With the  _ eyebrows _ ?” And weirdly, when she said it, when he said the words Jonas out loud, a sort of weight lifted off Isak. He felt lighter. Maybe it wasn’t some big drama after all. Maybe it was just a normal childhood crush he’d look back on and laugh about one day. Maybe it would be fine. Maybe Jonas really wouldn’t care. 

And so he turned and smiled back at Sana. “Those eyebrows are hotter to me than you could ever hope to be.”

“I’m a fucking tall drink of cold water and you know it,” Sana told him. 

“I know,” Isak replied with a smirk. “It’s just cause I’m -- gay.” He exhaled. And then immediately fell to the floor as Sana tackled him, with a loud whoop. “Sana!” He protested laughing. “What the fuck!”

“Isak,” she said, sitting triumphantly on top of him, “we’re going to be okay,” she told him, more seriously then he was expecting. He thought about making a joke or shoving her off, but instead, he just nodded stiffly and smiled.

“We’re going to be okay.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Stories are people. I'm a story, you're a story . . . your father is a story. Our stories go in every direction, but sometimes, if we're lucky, our stories join into one, and for a while, we're less alone.” - Jess Walters, Beautiful Ruins
> 
> As there's no books in this chapter, I thought I'd open with a quote to one of my favorites: Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walters. Stories are the most powerful thing in the world, in my opinion. I set out to write this because I've used writing and stories to make sense of the chaos and misery and joy in my life; and I wanted to help two characters find that same meaning, that same refuge in stories that I have always been able to find. 
> 
> This is it, everyone. So thank you so much for sticking with me through it all. Everyone who has kept with the story or is still following or still subscribed -- thank you! I can't thank you enough! You've all been incredible! 
> 
> Your welcome to follow me on tumblr and ask me anything or comment here, but even if you don't, I really want to say: thanks for reading! <3

**Author's Note:**

> [Come say hi on tumblr!](http://turtles-whynot.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
>  Ask me anything! Send me prompts, book suggestions, headcanons, whatever! Warning: books will most likely be thoroughly abused by Sana and Isak.


End file.
